Executive Summary
Transportation improvements and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive. Their synergy can yield significant benefits, such as reduction in traffic congestion; protection of wetlands and waterways; innovative use of recycled materials; development of low carbon construction products; improved environmentally focused design, construction, and maintenance specifications; and utilization of modernized, cleaner equipment and construction practices.
ARTBA’s environmental policy priorities incorporate the following principles:
- In the proper regulatory environment, the transportation construction industry can plan, design, and build projects safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively, while achieving high standards of environmental stewardship. Federal regulations should minimize duplicative and redundant requirements in the planning and permitting process.
- Where needed, federal environmental agencies should modernize their regulations, incorporating contemporary data, technology, and methods of communication.
- In addition, those agencies should fully implement project delivery reforms in existing law, such as One Federal Decision.
- Environmental policy and regulation should build on the significant stewardship initiatives the industry has already undertaken.
- Federal environmental policy should seek to minimize project delays and the additional costs that can dilute the economic benefits of transportation investment.
- Properly maintaining the nation’s transportation infrastructure, managing existing vulnerabilities and addressing future system needs and environmental impacts requires a stable, consistent federal funding mechanism.
To ensure continued progress in increasing the efficiency of environmental reviews and approvals, while promoting enhanced project outcomes, ARTBA supports recommendations in the following areas:
NEPA plays an important role integrating relevant environmental regulations and natural resource protections, as well as addressing stakeholder concerns relating to the planning, design, and delivery of transportation projects.
The transportation construction industry has played a critical, if often unrecognized, role in improving the nation’s air quality. ARTBA members continuously seek and deploy cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation construction.
In seeking to comply with permitting requirements under the Clean Water Act (CWA), the transportation construction industry has faced continually unsettled policies.
Transportation improvements should minimize impacts to wildlife and their habitats. Projects can also offer enhancements such as wildlife crossings, which help prevent collisions to the benefit of both wildlife and the traveling public.