Truth Be Tolled

Terri Hall on CNN

Sierra Club comments on the Trans-Texas Corridor

"The Tier I development and evaluation process has not been 'rigorous' and there has not been a 'proactive agency and public involvement program' because the public has spoken overwhelmingly that it does not want the proposal but the proposers still push the proposal. There is no 'balance' in meeting the purpose and need and minimizing the potential for environmental effects because there is a conflict of interest in pushing the proposal forward.

This leads the Sierra Club to the believe that instead of preparing a factual and unbiased DEIS [Draft Environmental Impact Statement]the proposers are attempting to mislead and mold the opinions of the public and decision-makers by misinterpretation via language of what really is at stake and exists in the I-69/TTC project area. This is the very antithesis of what an EIS is supposed to be and do. Such actions call for a withdrawal of the DEIS and a total reanalysis that is based on factual evidence and narrative and not manipulative and self-serving language that predetermines the outcome of this proposal.

The effects of current actions are not considered in the analysis of whether I-69/TTC should be constructed. For instance, global warming and the effects it is having and the generation of greenhouse gases that roads cause; the increased cost of oil, up to about $100/barrel; the increased cost of gasoline which is $3/gallon now and if expected to go to $4/gallon this summer; the collapse of the housing market; the recession that is evident in the United States economy; the reduction in funds for roads due to funding two wars, etc. All of these and more current actions affect and should play a role in determining whether I-69/TTC should be built. But there is no discussion about how these actions affect the decision of whether to build I-69/TTC."

--Brandt Mannchen, Air Quality Issue Chair of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, in a letter stating the environmental group's official comments to the FHA and TxDOT on TTC-69

Read the entire letter on Sal Costello's blog.

“As in most things, liberals in Hollywood tend to live in the fiction fantasy world. The governor lives in reality.”

--Robert Black, spokesman for Governor Rick Perry, quoted by Ralph Blumenthal of the New York Times in his April 5th article about the documentary, Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, a film narrated and sponsored by Robert Redford

The TTC-69 rally

Mythic

"Let’s be clear – the Trans-Texas Corridor is the NAFTA superhighway.

No one who supports the Trans-Texas Corridor likes to say the words 'NAFTA
superhighway.' They call it an 'urban myth.'

If the NAFTA superhighway is such a myth, why is the Bush administration work-
ing so hard to let Mexican trucks use our highways?

If the NAFTA superhighway is such a myth, why is corporate America holding
summits on the need for a huge network of freight corridors from Mexico to Canada?

If the NAFTA superhighway is such a myth, why is Mexico working with giant cor-
porations to expand its ports and its road and rail connections to the U.S. border?

The reason they say the NAFTA superhighway is a myth is because they know that
the vast majority of Americans don’t want it."

--James P. Hoffa, General President of The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in a letter read to crowds at Saturday's anti-TTC march on the Texas capitol

View a PDF file of the entire letter here.

March on Austin against the Trans-Texas Corridor

On April 5, 2008, activists, citizens and political representatives will be protesting the TTC, NAU, SPP and PPP's by staging a march to the Capitol.

Please come show your support.

Download a flyer for the event here.

Take Action

"Change doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up."

--Senator Barack Obama, in San Antonio last Friday night

281 Lawsuit press conference

Environmental lawsuit seeks to halt HWY 281 toll conversion

By Patrick Driscoll

From San Antonio Express-News

A long-running standoff over plans to morph part of U.S. 281 into a tollway — a spat that could lead to costly delays for motorists — headed to a federal court Tuesday.

Toll road critics and environmental activists joined forces, once again, to file a lawsuit on the last day of a deadline to legally challenge the tollway's latest environmental study.

The desperate effort could also be the last chance to scope down and strip out tolls from the planned 10- to 20-lane expressway, which would stretch 71/2 miles north of Loop 1604, and revert back to a freeway with half as many miles.

The 48-page lawsuit challenges the environmental study's conclusion — that widening U.S. 281 and tolling the express lanes would not significantly harm people, wildlife or drinking water. Activists called the claim ridiculous.

The project would lay down asphalt and concrete on another 70 acres across Edwards Aquifer recharge and contributory zones north of Loop 1604, according to the study, which federal officials cleared last summer.

"This lawsuit is really about common sense," said Enrique Valdivia, president of Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas. "We think paving over 300 acres of recharge is pretty significant to everyone who depends on the aquifer."

Drivers would pay 17 cents a mile to use the express lanes in 2012, with rates rising annually with consumer inflation. Access roads would be left as the nontoll option.

"Charging a toll will only hurt local businesses and residents who have invested in the 281 corridor," said Terri Hall, founder of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "Powerful special interests will profit from these tolls."

The two groups, represented by Save Our Springs Alliance, filed the lawsuit in San Antonio to demand a more detailed impact study, which could take several more years to do.

They filed a similar lawsuit just more than two years ago, which stopped U.S. 281 tollway construction, but state officials simply redid the less-intensive assessment. The regurgitated study took more than a year to finish and cost $2 million.

Since then, construction costs soared by a third and traffic got worse, and toll advocates fear such trends only will continue. If inflation rises 5 percent to 8 percent a year, as the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority projects, delays will burn an extra $53,000 to $85,000 a day.

"We are hopeful for a quick resolution to this lawsuit, which is serving as nothing more than a delay tactic for groups who have been opposed to any real relief on the 281 corridor," mobility authority Chairman Bill Thornton said.

Authority officials, who say the environmental study was thorough enough, are almost ready to select a private development team and then sell bonds for the $476 million tollway. Bulldozers are set to roll by summer, with toll lanes opening within four years.

If work on the first three miles of the tollway hadn't been blocked two years ago, the job would be 90 percent complete, said Clay Smith of the Texas Department of Transportation, which recently gave the project to the mobility authority.

Motorists today would be driving on access roads that had better turnarounds, more turn lanes and a bridge over Redland Road that's not there now, he said. Express toll lanes would be a year away from opening.

"It's a shame that folks continue to want to keep the public in gridlock out there," said Smith, who's a planning engineer. "We've got a plan to solve the congestion."

Hall and other critics say TxDOT caused the problem by converting a freeway- and overpass-plan for U.S. 281 into a tollway plan, and the agency along with the mobility authority have since refused to budge despite loud opposition.

Some of the $325 million in public subsidies set aside for toll roads in San Antonio should instead be spent on nontoll lanes, Hall said.

Toll promoters, including many in the road industry, say going back to a plan that does less is not good enough in the face of crushing growth.

Debate skips TTC question

By Patrick Driscoll

From the San Antonio Express-News

Oooh, now they're really buzzing.

CNN got growling Texans to back off a bombardment of e-mails earlier this week by promising to ask Democratic presidential candidates about the Trans-Texas Corridor in Thursday's debate, but the station never asked.

Not much at all in the 1-/12 hour debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton touched on Texas issues, much less the controversial plan to build 4,000 miles of toll lanes, rail lines and utility lines throughout the state this century.

"However, that didn't stop both from invoking the name of former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan as an inspiration and of drawing on Texans they have met to illustrate the need for health care or to end the war in Iraq," wrote Houston Chronicle and Express-News reporters R.G. Ratcliffe and Peggy Fikac.

Nevertheless, a CNN executive had reportedly told Independent Texans leader Linda Curtis that Obama and Clinton would be asked about the Trans-Texas Corridor as it relates to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Never happened.

Maybe the question got squeezed out by extra talk over such issues as whether health care should be mandatory. The loosely structured debate ran 10 minutes over.

Curtis e-mailed this to the CNN executive this morning, and copied it to her members "so Texans can let him have it":

Sam Feist, CNN Political Director
Dear Mr. Feist:

You called me the other day to request that we stop a barrage of emails to CNN requesting that someone ask Senators Obama and Clinton a question about the Trans-Texas Corridor in last night's debate. You told me that you were already planning such a question. I trusted that your word (sic). I also assumed that because CNN, Time Magazine and The New York Times had covered this issue this month, you understood how profound this issue is to Texans and to the nation. Sadly, I was wrong.

Texans face the largest land seizure in the history of the United States, for an international trade route that is highly controversial and promises far reaching effects on our land, our environment, Texas heritage, the US economy, homeland security and, most important to independents, our democracy.

Texans have been betrayed by the Governor, and many state and federal officials on both sides of the aisle, to global predators who are trying to rip the heart right out of Texas. This issue is at a breaking point where threats of violence are being expressed as the only option, due to the abuse of power by our elected officials and the utter failure of our political process to gain a fair hearing for ordinary Texans.

Texans want federal action and a Congressional investigation. You could have aided in this effort, but what you did was even worse. You made a promise, and then you let us down.

We hope you can sleep at night. This is why Americans need open and real debates run by a publicly accountable institution, which apparently CNN is not.

Linda Curtis

Independent Texans

Mr. Feist, welcome to the hot, big-hatted, cow-strewn state of Texas. And I mean hot.