Submitted by Ken Watts
The Idaho Transportation Department continues to march forward with their obscene 4 lane, high speed, limited access FREEWAY designs for US Highway 20, Ashton to near the Montana state line. These designs are ghastly expensive, up to $700,000,000. The environmental damage will be extensive and there may never be recovery from it. This is a seasonal highway segment with higher traffic about 5% of the hours of the year. This money could be better spent elsewhere in Idaho. ITD has not published any social or economic analysis for their designs. The Planning and Environment Linkages process, that ITD is using, requires that these analyses be done as part of the alternatives screening process. There were no independent sociologists or economists on the screening committees. These committees were made up almost entirely of ITD engineers and construction contractors. The communities of Island Park and Ashton and Fremont County must insist that the social and economic analyses be done before this project proceeds any further. A complaint should be filed with the National Highway Administration, the ITD Board, Representative Rod Furniss, and Governor Brad Little. ITD must follow the process. We must not let the NHWA sign off on the PEL process until these analyses are completed to the satisfaction of the communities and the county.
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Making Sense of It All
This blog will help you make sense out of all the information on the website, how it affects IP, our history, and how efforts continue to put IP into various forms of conservation status. Archives
May 2023
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