WASHINGTON DC:USEPA Gears up to Block Road Building

The USEPA is mounting a major effort in the states and cities to stop highway construction. In what appears to be a contravention of the US Congress intention in TEA21 to boost roadbuilding, USEPA is moving aggressively to recruit local officials, regulators and activist groups to divert TEA21 money away from highways to “demand management,” transit, clean water, ‘sprawl’ prevention and its other environmental favorites.

An “EPA TEA21 Workgroup Report” obtained by TRnl says that EPA’s current role under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is marginal, and proposes new interventions to make pro-environment officials, environmental activists and regulators more powerful in transportation planning at the local and regional levels. Its aim is to have projects for enhanced highway capacity killed early on, rather than brought to the point where their benefits and costs can be compared with USEPA-favored approaches.

The USEPA’s TEA21 report — not made public, but a copy of which is in our possession— says the federal agency needs to embrace a more radical and interventionist approach to stopping roads because: “Current strategies are leading to very rapid increases in driving and sprawl with escalating environmental damage.”

Comment: this is alarmist, because in fact driving, as measured by vehicle-miles traveled, is increasing annually at a bit over 2%, about the same as the economy. Total air emissions from motor vehicles in the US are declining. Sprawl is not measured (or measurable?) and cannot simply be linked to roadbuilding, as the USEPA formulation suggests. The maladies of central cities, their crime and high taxes, personal housing preferences, local land use controls and subsidized commuter rail, surely all have a large influence in expanding the built-area (What USEPA derisively calls “sprawl”).

Nonetheless it is the USEPA Report’s contention that reducing automobile use will produce “less congestion, greater social equity with improved accessibility, reduced local fiscal impacts and enhanced communities.” Nowhere in any of the USEPA’s analysis is there even a hint that use of motor vehicles provides people with benefits, as if everyone on the roads is driving for frivolous and selfish reasons. Driving is assumed throughout to be a ‘bad’ which the US government must work to reduce. Moreover there is no acknowledgment that there may be limits to the capacity of transit, bicycles and other supposedly environmentally friendly modes to substitute for the private car. 97% of personal surface transport in the US is by car, only 3% being by by rail or other ‘green’ modes.

Official policy

The report titled “New Approaches to Integrate Environmental and Transportation Policy through TEA21 Implementation” dated Aug 26 has been adopted by the USEPA Office of Policy according to a memo Sept 14 from the Assistant Administrator for Policy David Gardiner recommending it to Administrator Carol Browner. The USEPA’s director of the Transportation Partners (USEPA/TP) program Catherine Preston told us the TEA21 report has received all the endorsement it needs and is now agency policy.

“Fundamental to our success,” says the EPA cover memorandum, “will be our involvement in the early stages of transportation plan development.”

Traditionally the US govt has regarded transp plan development as a matter for cities and state governments, and the federal role has been one of vetting those aspects of projects that fall within its jurisdiction after the projects have been selected as the locally preferred alternative — accepting or rejecting them, or suggesting amendments. The new USEPA policy however calls for intervening in local project selection throughout the plan development process, especially at the early stages.

The documents call for “10 to 20 regional pilot(project)s to focus EPA’s TEA21 implementation activities.” And it wants a “dialogue” with USDOT and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) to discuss the funding for TEA21’s “environmental streamlining provisions,” about which it suggests alarm.

A table headed “Major Shifts in EPA policy Approaches Through TEA21” lays out the more interventionist and activist approach now being pursued. In place of simply ensuring that local plans meet legislative reqiurements for longterm plans and air quality conformity, it calls for a “Pilot Program in each Region to work with MPOs and other stakeholders to promote demand management (read: reduced auto use) and other innovative alternatives (to highways.) In addition to approval of regional plans on an air quality basis, integrate considerations of water, wetlands, habitat and open space preservation into evalutation criteria.” This is a call for USEPA involvement in setting up the criteria by which local governments judge transp alternatives.

Under project review it calls for “earlier consideration of demand management and other innovative alternatives.” In CMAQ it wants to “Improve the selection of projects” at the local level, and to “minimize the funds ‘flexed’ out of the program.” Flexing of funds is intended by the Congress to give local authorities extra choice but USEPA wants to intervene to keep funds in CMAQ (congestion mitigation and air quality.)

Under Water Quality where USEPA’s role has so far been to review plans for new roads to see they meet the requirements known as NPDES, it wants to “Capitalize on new funding opportunities for runoff mitigation retrofits on existing roads.” In other words it wants to divert highway funds to environmental projects that happen to be near existing roads. It proposes to use the water quality review also to “Broaden focus to regional planning and watershed management process, recognizing the importance of containing sprawl and regional water quality.”

Under Wetlands & Natural Habitat it wants to “Capitalize on TEA21 provisions that create new opportunities for natural habitat preservation” with highway monies. And again to “Broaden focus to regional planning process recognizing the importance of containing sprawl and successful wetland and natural habitat preservation.”

Sprawl, sprawl, sprawl

Sprawl, or any greenfields development, is to be resisted under every possible regulatory heading, the paper suggests. It speaks with apprehension of the “40% funding increase” for highway and bridge construction in TEA21 and says that the agency’s success in meeting its objectives “will be strongly influenced by the choices, made primarily within regional planning processes, between investments that fuel urban sprawl (read: highways), and investments that support more livable communities with less dependency on single occupant vehicle travel.”

The report declares: “EPA must adopt a strategic (read: interventionist) approach to reducing the significant environmental impacts associated with the current system of transportation planning.” It then proceeds to paint an alarming picture of environmental deterioration that is at variance with the real world data. It then adds: “Demand management (read: traffic reduction) strategies will benefit most aspects of the environment....” It says nothing of what they might do to reduce people’s mobility and economic opportunities.

More aggressive intervention is presaged: “EPA’s current approach does not effect (Correct English here is ‘affect’) cumulative multimedia impacts. Our programs focus on mitigating small impacts associated with individual transp projects while cumulative multimedia imapcts continue without abatement. (Read: we need to curb the amount of driving on existing roads rather than just try and stop new ones.) While vehicle-caused pollution doubles periodically in most metropolitan areas (FACT: it is steadily declining in most metro areas, not increasing, let alone doubling.) we are trying to mitigate single projects. The agency must coordinate our resources to address this problem.”

The paper calls for an effort to draft “a plan of action which can then be formed into a strategic cooperative effort with (US)DOT.” It wants USDOT to endorse “the broad benefits for accessibility, the environment and communities from reducing auto dependency and urban sprawl.”

The TEA21 provisions to streamline environmental clearance, intended by the US Congress to reduce the power of environmental regulators to block road projects, are seen by USEPA to present “an opportunity to change the transp planning process by building on our involvement in plan development (Read: USEPA intervention in local planning) to ensure that demand management strategies (Read: less automobile use) with broad multimedia benefits are addressed at key points in the planning process.” (“Multimedia” is EPA jargon for environmental benefits via the ‘media’ of air, water and ground.)

“Better integration of environmental and transp policies require more engagement (read: USEPA intervention) with transp planning at a number of levels. EPA-DOT coordination of policy objectives can be improved from the development of regional 20 year transp plans down to the inclusion of media-specific consideration in individual projects. Working with metropolitan planning organizations and state DOTs to ensure full consideration of comprehensive environmental objectives within longrange regional plans would be the ideal outcome.”

USEPA hopes to draw on the $25m/year of the Transp Community Systems Preservation program (TCSPP) to fund the pilot programs of “engagement” (read: intervention) in local planning processes.

Model interventions

A list of environmentally sound projects is provided and includes:

• northwest Indiana where environmental criteria were adopted that caused “several” undesired highway projects to be removed “before project selection.” (Read: we don’t want highway projects to get to the stage where they can be compared with ‘green’ approaches.)

• the Philadelphia area where a set of environmental indicators was established for the 2020 plan that undercuts road enhancement proposals

• a San Francisco Regional Alliance For Transit (RAFT) that is being supported by USEPA to reduce driving by 6%. The agency has also been able to gain a “significant increase in public (read: activist/enviromentalist) involvement in the regional planning process.”

The USEPA approach has been used in Region III (mid-Atlantic) where early involvement by the agency and its allies and consideration of environmental issues occurred “before key political decisions are made.” This prevents the formation of a political constituency for a highway project: “Currently most environmental reviews occur after (highway) projects have a political constituency behind them, making change (read: blocking road projects) very difficult.”

Under CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality) funding the paper calls for an insistence that the AQ get the major benefits, not the CM. Improved traffic signalization for example should be ineligible for CMAQ support, the paper suggests, since it can “induce more overall travel” while reducing congestion.

USEPA, the statement says, will be working for regional plans that provide “sustainable transportation... as alternatives to highway expansion.” Motor vehicles are not “sustainable” according to USEPA doctrine, so such plans will minimize provision for roads.

“Better transp policies and strategies that reduce reliance on new roads” should be a product of the “streamlining” of the review process, according to the TEA21 report, “reducing the need for stakeholder involvement at later stages.” (Read: if we kill highways at conception we won’t have to fight them later on.)

The USEPA report says that “coordination with USDOT is a top priority.” (Read: we need their help to foist this stuff on the states and cities.)

“TEA21 presents EPA with the opportunity and the challenge to coordinate with transp agencies at all tiers – federal, regional and state – to ensure the inclusion of environmental issues in their outreach efforts. EPA should specifically pursue the opportunity to be actively involved in their outreach sessions.” (Read: If we can get our people in there at the public presentations by the MPOs and state DOTs, we can ensure that the anti-highway case is put forcefully.)

The task force review says it will be important for USEPA not to overplay its hand: “Because the act’s primary purpose is transp, EPA must be careful not to ‘get out in front’ of USDOT’s roll-out of TEA21 (Read: we risk a backlash developing if we are too prominent. Better work on USDOT and get them to carry the green flag with us.)

The report speaks of the need to “mobilize our core constituencies” (Read: Get the environmental activists stirred up to stop roads) and to achieve this there will need to be “a central outreach coodination role” (Read: centrally organized anti-roads propaganda and mobilization.) This should be done through manipulation of USDOT: “EPA will work with DOT to craft the appropriate message on each of these issues.”

The report ends with a recommendation that an additional 31.5 full time equivalent staff, and $3.15m in support funds, be allocated to cover the TEA21 followup campaign which it describes as “new umbrella for transp planning and environmental review.” (A copy of the memorandum and USEPA REA21 report cited is available for $5.00. Call 301 631 1148 or tollroads@aol.com)