Description: Challenge to construction and transportation management program to improve mobility across the Ohio River between Kentucky and southern Indiana.
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Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation v. Federal Highway Administration
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 08/07/2014 Opinion Download District court judgment dismissing case affirmed. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. Like the district court, the Sixth Circuit was not persuaded that the reviewing agencies’ consideration of greenhouse gas emissions was inadequate. The Sixth Circuit said that defendants’ position that they could not “usefully evaluate” such emissions on a project-specific basis because of “the non-localized, global nature” of climate impacts was not arbitrary and capricious. -
Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation v. Federal Highway Administration
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 07/17/2013 Memorandum Opinion and Order Download Memorandum opinion and order issued dismissing case. A federal district court dismissed a challenge to a $2.6-billion construction and transportation management program designed to improve mobility across the Ohio River between Kentucky and Southern Indiana. Among other things, plaintiff claimed that defendants “purposely withheld” information about greenhouse gas emissions during the project’s review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that defendants ignored EPA comments regarding greenhouse gas emissions and that defendants misled the public about the extent of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions. The court ruled that plaintiff had failed to proffer any regulatory mandate or national environmental standards requiring analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in the NEPA process. Although the court called consideration of greenhouse gas emissions “patently important,” the court agreed with defendants that “Project-specific quantification of greenhouse gas emissions, and their effect on climate change, would be largely uninformative and speculative.” The court noted that defendants had committed to working with the DOT Center for Climate Change to develop strategies to reduce transportation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and to assess the risks posed by climate change to transportation systems.