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Area's Pollution Solution Federal Transportation Funds Hinge on Hitting Limits, but Environmentalists Leery of a Short-Term Fix Washington Post; Dec 20, 2001; by Katherine Shaver; |
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The Washington region will need $38 million worth of cleaner buses, new taxicabs and other measures to cut vehicle exhaust and keep federal money for new road and transit projects, a task force of area politicians and transportation planners said yesterday. The task force also suggested that the regional Transportation Planning Board find out whether the exhaust problem could be solved more cheaply by simply changing the region's limits on certain vehicle emissions. The planning board -- made up of lawmakers and transportation officials from Maryland, Virginia and the District -- is scheduled to decide on a solution in February, but both options are drawing critics. Environmental groups say changing the vehicle exhaust limits would temporarily solve the problem on paper but wouldn't clean up the region's unhealthy air. Transportation officials, meanwhile, say they don't have the money to pay for the pollution-fighting measures. "The governments, particularly in this recessionary environment, are going to be dragged kicking and screaming towards" paying for pollution-fighting measures, said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the region's air-quality committee and next year's chairman of the planning board. "The environmental community is going to be making it clear that we need to be moving forward on the environment." The Washington region cannot add new road or transit projects to its long-term transportation plans until it cuts vehicle emissions below its self-imposed limits by 2005. Transportation planners for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments found this summer that exhaust from an increase in sport-utility vehicles and light trucks would violate those limits on nitrogen oxides. Nitrogen oxides and another by-product of vehicle exhaust, volatile organic compounds, combine in sunlight to form unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone. The Washington region is in violation of federal ozone standards. The region can get credit for reducing its excess nitrogen oxides by decreasing the number of older and heavy diesel vehicles or by instituting programs that encourage people to walk, ride bikes or take transit. However, because the region is well below its limits on volatile organic compounds, it also could lower its limits on that exhaust by-product and raise the limits on nitrogen oxides so there is no longer a violation. "We feel that would be a viable way of fixing this problem, and no one would have to sacrifice any projects," said Tom Farley, the Northern Virginia district administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation. Farley said the air-quality problem has caused Virginia to take a more gradual approach to its plans to improve Route 28 between Route 7 and Interstate 66. Rather than replacing 10 intersections on Route 28 with interchanges in one project, Farley said, the state will do six interchanges first and the rest in another phase. If the vehicle emissions limits aren't changed, Maryland, Virginia and the District will have to decide how much each jurisdiction will pay toward the $38 million in anti-pollution projects. "We don't have that kind of money," Farley said. Projects include replacing the engines of 500 heavy diesel trucks, replacing 300 older taxis with vehicles that run on compressed natural gas, buying 200 cleaner-burning buses, encouraging more people to work from home and putting bicycle racks on more Metro buses. Melanie Mayock, of the Sierra Club, said such changes are needed to combat asthma and other illnesses related to breathing unhealthy air. "We want to see actions that would result in real reductions in air pollution," Mayock said. |
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