If you work in a region that does not meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) clean air standards, then federal funding for the road and transit projects in your region can come to a grinding halt. In fact, the entire construction industry in the same region can quickly begin to suffer, as limits on access to your communities begins to retard their growth.
Stop development
The consequences of not meeting air standards have long been a problem for construction, but the problem is about to get worse. In 1997, EPA strengthened the ozone (smog) and particulate matter (dust/soot) standards. EPA delayed implementing these standards because it was tied up in lawsuits. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld EPA's authority to issue the standards but ordered the agency to rewrite its ozone implementation rule. The ozone and particulate matter designations of attainment and nonattainment areas are expected to take place in the April to December 2004 timeframe.
EPA recently proposed its new implementation strategy outlining steps states must take to meet the stricter ozone standard. In this rule, EPA suggests a new program called the "Clean Air Development Communities"
(CADC) to encourage development patterns that reduce overall ozone emissions. AGC submitted a letter to EPA strongly opposing the program, which would intrude on local land-use planning. The CADC program also would shift certain emission credits that otherwise would remain in the mobile source sector, where they could be used for conformity determinations, according to the proposal states. AGC stresses in its comments, which are available online (www.agc.org/Environmental_Info/env_reg_comments.asp), that this move would have a negative effect on the construction industry.
Nonstop stalling?
Even though the transportation conformity process has undergone numerous revisions since its inception in 1993, the process remains overly burdensome, disjointed and inefficient. The excessive frequency of conformity determinations (due to statutory and regulatory mandates) means that planning organizations are continually performing overlapping demonstrations. Conformity lapses are almost always caused by procedural problems, not by a nonattainment area building too much transportation infrastructure. Even more troubling is the fact that transportation project opponents use legal challenges to the conformity review process to disrupt the planning process and stop construction.
Hundreds of local governments and the entire construction industry will soon be subject to the nonstop process of reconciling local transportation development with the goals of the Clean Air Act. With the advent of EPA's new air quality standards for ozone and fine particulate matter, an additional 194 areas covering 656 counties may soon be in nonattainment and subject to this defective process for the first time.
EPA recently proposed its latest round of conformity revisions that would replace certain regulatory provisions held invalid in a 1999 federal court decision and introduce new reforms to the process. AGC views the streamlining revisions described in this proposal, when taken in aggregate, as a positive step for the transportation conformity process. AGC states in its comment letter that it supports changes that will lead to a reduction in the number of conformity lapses, as well as those changes that will ensure the most efficient use of transportation infrastructure and air planners' resources. AGC's comments are available online (www. agc. org / Environmental _Info/env_reg_comments.asp).
AGC also has prepared and distributed a comprehensive set of background papers on the very complex matter of transportation conformity. These papers provide innovative statutory solutions to many of the most troubling aspects of the transportation conformity process, without having a negative impact on the environment. As Congress works to reauthorize the federal aid highway program, AGC is aggressively seeking meaningful reforms to the conformity process. View AGC's recommendations online (www.agc.org/Environmental_Info/Air_Resources.asp).
