AASHTO Journal, 1 May 2015
Organizations representing state departments of transportation and local-area planning agencies are trying to awaken federal officials to how EPA regulators greatly underestimate the costs they put on transportation agencies to show how their programs and projects conform with environmental law.
And in their latest official comments, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials along with the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations emphasized they have been repeatedly making this same point for more than a decade.
Meeting the EPA’s conformity tests requires DOTs and MPOs to perform extensive analysis that involves data collection and modeling, both for an entire plan and later on individual projects under it. State and local officials say the federal agency does not recognize the burdens that process imposes, and that the EPA does not consult with them to assess the true costs.
In an April 24 letter to the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, AASHTO and AMPO jointly responded to a Feb. 23 Federal Register request for comments on an EPA “transportation conformity information collection request.”
The Register notice had explained that under the Clean Air Act, all transportation plans, improvement programs and highway or transit projects that are federally funded or approved must show conformity to the purpose of the state’s air quality implementation plan.
That means they must show such transportation activities “will not cause or contribute to new air quality violations, worsen existing violations, or delay timely attainment of the relevant national ambient air quality standards … or interim milestones,” the notice said.
And those determinations “are required before federal approval or funding is given to certain types of transportation planning documents as well as non-exempt highway and transit projects.”
AASHTO and AMPO said in their letter that the EPA has been demonstrating a big gap “between estimated conformity costs and actual conformity costs.” They also attached a letter on this same issue that AASHTO submitted in 2004, and a joint AASHTO-AMPO comment letter from 2011.
They said the EPA, in its analysis of cost burdens for conformity requirements, “is using fundamentally flawed assumptions that result in significantly underestimated national conformity costs.”
The associations said they “understand the challenges that EPA faces in developing cost estimates for the conformity process,” but renewed past requests for the regulators to consult with state DOTs and MPOs to get more accurate results.
“As MPOs and DOTs are the agencies that fund and implement conformity requirements, we are uniquely qualified to assist EPA more accurately estimate burden hours and annual costs,” their letter said.
“Accurate estimates of burden hours and conformity process costs will benefit future conformity determinations and amendments, as well as provide needed information to transportation and air quality agencies as they program scarce resources. We request that EPA reconsider the comments in our 2004 and 2011 letters regarding cost estimates, and convene a work group with representatives from state DOTs and MPOs to develop more accurate assumptions and methodologies before finalizing cost estimates for the ICR.”