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FARMINGTON — An organization tasked with transportation planning in San Juan County is proposing roads that would run through the Glade Run Recreation Area.
The Farmington Metropolitan Planning Organization is proposing roads through the popular recreation area north of the city, according to city documents. One road would run through Chokecherry Canyon through which the dirt Glade Road snakes.

Two other roads would run east and west through the Glade, popular with off-highway vehicles, hikers, bicyclists, dirt bikers and horseback riders.

City councilors reviewed the plan as the organization suggested various size classifications of the roads at a meeting Tuesday. The plan is a way for the organization to attempt to preserve places where the roads could be built in the future.

Martin Lucero, associate planner for the planning organization, said the road through Chokecherry Canyon and its extension to New Mexico 574 was proposed by the city of Farmington years ago.

If the road ends up being built, Lucero said places for people to park to access the Glade for recreation could be built.

Councilman Jason Sandel suggested the road could be one stretch of a longer road that could run through the Glade on the outside of the Farmington area years from now.

"If what we're looking for is some type of road around the community, perhaps to be used by industrial traffic 35 years from now that doesn't have an existing impact on homeowners and current land use plan, that could be an option," Sandel said.

The Glade consists mostly of public Bureau of Land Management land.

The bureau has no plans to sell the public land for housing developments, said Joel Farrell, the bureau's assistant field manager.

"That land is to be retained in public ownership as the Glade Recreation Management Area," Farrell said. "There are no plans and none in the future to convert that to private land for city development, for private development."

The city would have to do an environmental assessment on the land to build any roads in the Glade and the public would be able to comment during the process, Farrell said.

"They'd have to make an application for that and we would review it and analyze that," he said.

The bureau decided in a similar process to allow the city to extend College Boulevard.

The $2.2 million project that recently paved dirt portions of College Boulevard and Hood Mesa Trail to Foothills Drive provided easier access to a residential area, but the work also affected access to the Glade.

Fences were installed along the road, blocking Glade users from crossing, but Farrell said there are still ways to access the Glade from the road.

A number of public meetings were held about the road, Farrell said. Comments during those meetings led the bureau to decide to approve paving the roads.

The planning organization also suggests extending Hood Mesa Trail east of Foothills Drive to County Road 3535 in Flora Vista. That road would not run through the Glade.

Lucero said there wasn't much development in the area until Flora Vista.

"There's a lot once you get to County Road 3535," he said. "That is an area that's really exploding currently. There's a lot of trailers that are going in there."

The extension of Hood Mesa Trail also could provide better access to Durango, Colo., he added.

Steve Lynn: