Community members have the opportunity until Dec. 9 during public comment on whether the Texas Department of Transportation should continue overseeing its own compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their project decisions.
TxDOT originally signed an agreement of understanding with the Federal Highway Administration in 2014, which allowed it to oversee its own compliance with environmental laws. This authority was renewed in 2019 and is set to expire at the end of the month, though the department requested a renewal in November. Following concerns over TxDOT’s current projects, activist organizations such as Rethink35 and Reconnect35 have been pushing for increased federal oversight in TxDOT’s project approval process.
“They’re proposing projects and then doing the NEPA analysis required for those projects, and then certifying their own work and moving to construction,” said Addie Walker, a volunteer with Reconnect Austin. “Nowhere in this process is the federal government involved. TxDOT has a pretty big conflict of interest there, and a pretty big incentive to just push through projects that they want to go to construction, even when there might be issues with the impacts that those are going to have on communities.”
According to an assessment by the Texas Streets Coalition, the expansion of Interstate-35 will disproportionately displace communities of color. The NEPA assignment shows the number of residential displacements in Texas has increased significantly since 2014 compared to the national average. According to the document, several neighborhoods within the I-35 expansion also have high incidents of respiratory conditions.
Adam Hammons, the media relations director for TxDOT, said the department fulfills the NEPA analysis requirement and evaluates the human and environmental impacts of their projects and looks at traffic noise, air quality, natural resources, parks, land use and hazardous material sites.
Elena Morales, a board member for ReThink35, said expanding the highway in Austin will not decrease traffic on the highway and instead lead to more cars on the highway, which will cause more carbon dioxide emissions.
“We are increasing our reliance on cars when we really need to be scaling back. … We’re already seeing the ramifications and climate change, and we live in (an) already a very hot area,” Morales said. “That’s only going to get worse if we continue to move in that direction.”
Transportation accounts for around 30% of greenhouse emissions in Austin, and the environmental implications of the number of expansion projects in Austin could potentially be a serious danger, said Heyden Walker, a director for Reconnect Austin. She said the city is generally doing a good job investing towards sidewalks, urban trails and public transit, but it’s hard to incentivize people to not drive amidst all the highway expansions.
“TxDOT could do a better job, but until they figure out how to do a better job, it would be better for there to be federal oversight as there used to be,” Heyden said. “There needs to be checks and balances.”
