TxDOT has announced their intention to build a north/south highway to connect I-10 near Katy with Highway 290 west of Waller. They have identified multiple preliminary alignment alternatives within a study area that is approximately 20 to 25 miles in length from I-10 to US 290. (Study area shown above). The study area boundaries generally coincide with the Waller County jurisdictional boundaries. It is anticipated that all preliminary alignment alternatives would require right-of-way acquisition. The project is in the early stages of development, and a preferred alternative has not been selected. The project team seeks input on the alternatives as well as any potential environmental constraints, anticipated permits or other authorizations, and any significant issues that should be analyzed in depth in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

One of the proposed routes aligns with FM 359, a highway that borders the length of The John Fairey Garden on the east. Widening that highway and adding access roads would have an irreversibly negative impact on the Garden and our guests’ enjoyment of it. We strongly oppose a route that aligns with FM 359, and have asked TxDOT to take that route out of consideration.

If you share our concern with the impact of a new major highway built alongside the Garden, I would humbly ask that you send an email to TxDOT expressing your opposition. All comments must be received by July 31, 2026.

Below is a template you may copy, paste, and send to 36ANorth@txdot.gov

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Subject: 36A North Project (CSJ 0912-00-646) — Scoping Comments Opposing the FM 359 Corridor Alternative

To the 36A North Project Team:

I am writing to formally oppose the FM 359 alignment and to ask that TxDOT eliminate it from further study in favor of an alternative that avoids The John Fairey Garden.

Founded in 1971 by John G. Fairey, a Texas A&M architecture professor, the Garden is a 40-acre artist’s garden with a significant botanical collection and accredited arboretum (ArbNet) holding more than 5,000 plants representing roughly 1,500 unique taxa, many collected on over 100 expeditions to Mexico and obtained through decades of exchange with botanical gardens and nurseries worldwide. It includes more than 90 oak species, several rare and wild-collected specimens with no equivalent in cultivation elsewhere. The Garden is a preservation partner of The Garden Conservancy – the holder of a conservation easement on part of the property – and has been documented by The Cultural Landscape Foundation as a significant designed landscape.

The FM 359 alignment would bring practical harm to the Garden that would be irreversible. NEPA directs agencies to weigh “irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources” in evaluating alternatives. Many of the Garden’s specimens are threatened, wild-collected, decades old, and impossible to relocate or replace; root zones, soil hydrology, and microclimate conditions that support them took fifty years to establish and cannot be re-created on a construction timeline. Construction-phase impacts — dust, soil compaction, altered drainage, and possible invasive species introduction  — would threaten plant health well beyond the limits of any right-of-way line, regardless of how far the final alignment is set back from our boundary.

We recognize TxDOT must balance mobility needs across the study area, but I ask that the range of build alternatives carried forward into the Draft EIS exclude any alignment using the FM 359 corridor adjacent to or through The John Fairey Garden, and that TxDOT instead advance an alternative located away from documented Section 4(f) and conservation-easement resources.

Thank you for your consideration,

(name)

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Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope you’ll take the few minutes it will take to express your opposition to the FM359 corridor alternative. Again, all comments must be received by July 31, 2026.