Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SIERRA CLUB SETTLEMENT: Way clear to widen freeway

Deal allows restart of work to have 10 lanes of traffic flowing by 2007

Click image for enlargement. Gathered next to a freeway sound wall at Fyfe Elementary School, Sierra Club representatives discuss the settlement with members of the media on Monday. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Gov. Kenny Guinn "Some give and take for everybody"

The widening of car-choked U.S. Highway 95 will resume this fall after engineers and environmentalists agreed Monday to settle a lawsuit that largely had blocked planned road work since last year.

The deal between the Sierra Club and U.S. and Nevada highway departments paves the way for the six-lane road to be widened to 10 lanes by the fall of 2007, eight months behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget.

Promised in return is air testing, filtering and buffer zones for schools nearest the highway; cleaner-burning school bus engines; and new national research into health risks posed by auto emissions.

"The project can go forward. The gridlock can end. And the Sierra Club's health concerns can be addressed," said Lynette Boggs McDonald, a Clark County commissioner who helped broker the deal with Commission Chairman Rory Reid. "Now, let's go and complete a freeway."

The U.S. 95 plan largely had been on hold since July 2004, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered major portions of construction stopped while it considered the Sierra Club's appeal of a court order dismissing its lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleged that health risks to people living alongside a widened highway were given inadequate consideration by planners who had approved the project.

"The U.S. 95 widening project is too important to the overall quality of life in Southern Nevada to wait for the courts to deal with it," Boggs McDonald said. "In lawsuit scenarios, the lawyers often win, and the taxpayers usually lose."

The deal's major parties expressed pleasure with the final result. "There's some give and take for everybody," Gov. Kenny Guinn said. "We're happy it's settled, and that we can move ahead."

Said Jane Feldman, the club's Southern Nevada conservation co-chair: "We are really gratified that our concerns about health are being listened to and mitigated."

"We're really excited we had an opportunity to make a difference here in Las Vegas," Feldman said.

The pact still has to be approved by a federal judge here.

The deal will allow widening work to restart on U.S. 95, which Guinn called "perpetually congested." The stretch of highway in question, which carried as few as 25,000 cars daily in the early 1970s, now carries about 200,000 cars and trucks every day.

That volume is expected to grow to 300,000 vehicles within five years.

Bids on new work phases are expected to be sought starting July 7 and awarded in October, with substantial completion of work by August 2007. Landscaping and aesthetic work won't conclude until July 2008.

During the stoppage on widening work, engineers were allowed to continue construction that did not involve adding highway lanes, such as building sound walls, overpasses and drainage systems.

As part of the deal, authorities will also install air filtration and monitoring systems at Fyfe and Adcock elementary schools and Western High School, all of which abut the highway at points between Rainbow and Valley View boulevards.

Also, authorities will relocate a playground and three mobile classrooms at Fyfe away from the highway and tweak a planned rebuilding of Western to minimize any pollution impacts for students on its grounds.

Those moves could cost the state as much as $2 million, though the state will seek federal reimbursement.

Also, the state will give the county's school district $1 million to retrofit its buses with ceramic "scrubbers" to reduce the amount of soot in its bus emissions, and it will work with the Regional Transportation Commission to develop an outreach program to encourage reduction of idling time for diesel-powered trucks.

"We expect to have a real effect on the health of children going to school," Feldman said.

And federal authorities agree to monitor vehicle emissions at five major highway locations nationwide in hopes of determining the level and behavior of toxins emitted by passing cars. U.S. 95 could be one of those sites, which are yet to be determined.

The deal led the club to withdraw its challenge to the U.S. 95 project in the federal appeals court, remanding it to U.S. District Judge Philip Pro for a decision on the settlement. A ruling from Pro, who initially rejected the Sierra Club's claims last year, is expected within days.

The lack of roadside monitors, filters and studies were central to the Sierra Club's position that health risks to people living alongside widened highways were not considered adequately by planners who approved the project.

Project officials persistently have denied that argument, adding that the testing plan was not an admission of the validity of the club's claims.

"This will expand the body of knowledge on pollutants," said Mary Peters, chief of the Federal Highway Administration. "There are a lot of things we don't know about air quality issues."

In court, federal authorities had argued they'd done all they could to research pollution risks to roadside residents. The club disagreed, pointing to independent studies suggesting a heightened risk of lung problems and cancers for people living and working near a widened road.

"We do not think people are at risk today," Peters said. "What we do think is we don't have the information to make a determination on this issue."

The club and transportation officials alike praised the roles of Reid and Boggs McDonald in reaching an agreement.

"The real turn-key to get people to sit at the table and talk to each other was the county commissioners," Feldman said. "That's when we saw the difference happening."

Prior to that, attempts to settle matters out of court went nowhere. The commissioners entered talks in April at the behest of the Sierra Club.

"Whenever people disagree vehemently about something, you have to thread the needle and find ways to create mutual interest," Reid said.

That came courtesy of the Clark County School District, which commissioners brought into negotiations and which offered its schools for use in a compromise.

"It became a communitywide discussion on what we can do to move people from one end of the valley to another safely, and in a way that wouldn't negatively impact children in our schools," Reid said.

Parties said the settlement was not spurred by the U.S. Senate's approval of a bill amendment last month that would have removed legal blockades to the resumption of work.

That measure, intended to be a hedge against a collapse in settlement talks, was sponsored by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

"We were at these deal points weeks prior to that amendment going through," Boggs McDonald said.

Nonetheless, Ensign was pleased with the outcome. "We can all breathe a sigh of relief," he said in a prepared statement. "Although we will never get back the past year of standstill, it is time to look forward."

Although it is not required by the settlement, Reid said his commission soon could consider a local rule mandating buffer zones between new schools and highways.

"It's not a novel concept. We create distance requirements for a lot of things that may negatively impact children," Reid said.

"We don't let taverns be constructed within a certain distance of schools, or casinos be constructed within a certain distance of schools."

"If we believe emissions from motor vehicles might negatively impact children, it's something we should consider," Reid said.

The delay in work will result in a substantial jump in the project's price tag, because of the rising cost of asphalt and steel, that taxpayers will have to absorb. A state highway official earlier this month estimated that the cost could be increased by $30 million.

"There are significant cost overruns associated with inflation," said Jeff Fontaine, the state's transportation director.

The club dropped some of its demands for a settlement, including air scrubbers for homes sitting along U.S. 95 and formal consideration of a light rail line along the highway's corridor.

"When you start talking about environmental goals, you can talk about smart growth, you can talk about transportation choices," Feldman said.

"You won't be able to achieve all your goals at the same time."

But Feldman said she was confident that the Regional Transportation Commission adequately was pursuing alternatives to driving in the valley. Feldman herself serves on the commission's light rail committee.

"There's an recognition at the RTC that transportation choices need to be part of the solution," Feldman said.

"If we had a light rail system that served 100,000 people a day, there will probably be 80,000 fewer vehicle trips made in the valley" each day.

"If you make room for more cars, more cars will come," Feldman said.

"There has to be a bigger range of action taken to provide the level of mobility we demand."