Obama Administration Holds Up Oakland Airport Connector Stimulus Funds over Civil Rights Complaint!

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We need your help to cement this victory. Please join us at:

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) meeting on Wednesday, January 27th at 10am. 101 Eighth Street, Oakland, CA

Federal Transit Administration says BART plan “insufficient.. on many fronts”

Allies- Today marks a huge victory for transit riders, workers and tax payers. The Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) has informed BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) that the agencies have put at risk $70 million in stimulus funding currently allocated to the controversial Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project. The action, the first of its kind in the nation, comes as a result of a complaint filed last Fall by nonprofit law firm Public Advocates Inc. on behalf of Urban Habitat, TransForm and Genesis, charging BART with failing to comply with federal civil rights obligations.

This decision forces the hand of the MTC to either cancel the project or to go double or nothing and bet $70 million on the chance that BART can prove that the project will not unduly impact low-income people and people of color. While it remains to be seen how MTC will react to this situation, it nonetheless a huge win for transit riders. Even if the project moves forward, our work over the past year, and the FTA’s ruling has sent a strong message that the days of steamrolling mega projects over communities of color are waning.

Demand Equity in Transportation Funding at the next MTC Meeting

While this victory speaks to the hard work that we all have been putting into stopping the project, it also underscores the need to continue to fight to make sure that stimulus money serves transit riders and preserves transit jobs. Next Wednesday, the 27th at 10am, the MTC board will discuss how to spend the anticipated next round of federal stimulus money. We need to bring a strong contingent to this meeting to demand that this money be used to stop fare hikes, services cuts, and layoffs rather than financing boondoggle projects like the OAC.

This morning, BART called a press conference, desperate to assure the Bay Area that the letter is just an administrative hiccup. Looking visibly shaken, BART spokespeople asserted once more their belief that the project will go forward despite the opposition.
“BART’s and MTC’s claims that these are “last minute requirements” are disingenuous,” said Bob Allen of Urban Habitat. “The fact is that both agencies ignored repeated warnings from the community and advocates to look at community consequences and project alternatives. What’s worse is that they falsely certified to the federal government that they had done what is necessary. Now their failure to follow the rules has put these funds at risk.”

MTC and BART Put $70M at Risk by Cutting Corners on Civil Rights

By federal law, FTA must redistribute to other regions any money that is not obligated on March 5, 2010, unless FTA determines that BART has met all requirements for the OAC project by that date or MTC reallocates it to eligible uses, such as increased transit service on existing bus lines. FTA’s letter makes it clear that trying to complete a required equity analysis in an effort to continue to allocate these funds to BART’s half-billion dollar OAC project by March 5 carries very significant risks.

“FTA is telling MTC and BART that the $70 million in stimulus funding will be taken away from the Bay Area unless MTC promptly reallocates it,” said Richard Marcantonio of Public Advocates Inc. “We call on MTC to shift the money to Plan B: preserving existing transit service as it promised it would do last February.”

“The OAC project is a poster child for bad regional planning,” said John Knox White from Transform. “By its failure to use common sense, do due diligence or respond to community concerns, BART has created a money-wasting half-million dollar boondoggle. MTC is complicit in failing to provide the required oversight of BART, and in causing massive transit cuts, fare hikes and pink slips that this funding could have prevented. It calls both agencies’ leadership and accountability into question.”

See also:

FTA letter to MTC and BART 1-15-10

A Chronology of the Connector

FTA Complaint

Audio from BART Press Conference

Baltimore Accessibility Maps

The Baltimore Accessibility Maps Web Site lets you create a series of accessibility maps for Baltimore Transportation Analysis Zones. You can compare access to services (Retail, Office or Industry) for all TAZs or for a specific neighborhoods (e.g. West Baltimore). You can compare access to services by private car vs. public transport.

Read more here. Try it out here.

BART is the applicant and primary sponsor of this project. BART will act as the grant recipient in the contract with Caltrans, conduct general oversight, and support any required coordination of resources. The Northern California chapter of COMTO is the sub-applicant, providing on-the-ground leadership, making arrangements for all direct labor, and managing the bulk of the project’s efforts, including schedules, budget, and deliverables.

COMTO members wrote the grant application and are valuable participants in the implementation of the grant, providing project consultants, technical assistance, and access to governing and decision making boards and transportation agencies. Much of the work in support of this project involves information and data collection, outreach, surveys, and partnership coordination as well as meeting and event planning. COMTO’s large body of scholarship recipients, many of whom fit the target demographic, will be working with the chapter to implement the project.

The project will use a case study approach based on a dynamic environmental justice information processing toolkit developed by Glenn Robinson of Morgan State University, the Urban Research Institute, and its partners (www.BREJTP.com). The toolkit demonstrates how a dynamic environmental justice information processing experience can effectively engage the community in transportation planning. Lee L. Davis, COMTO Chapter President, recognizing the work of Morgan State and its partners, noted, “We acknowledge the group that developed the toolkit, which will provide a strong basis for reference as we develop the guidebook.”

For More Information
Contact: Marilyn Ababio, PM
COMTO
ababiom@yahoo.com
510-839-6120

This video exploring Environmental Justice issues in the Baltimore area is the newest addition to the EJKit video library.

Associated Press Writer

Posted: Oct. 27 5:28 p.m.

Updated: Oct. 27 9:30 p.m.

ATLANTA — Environmental and racial justice activists from six states met with federal Environmental Protection Agency officials Tuesday to demand a revamp of the agency they accuse of overlooking years of chronic environmental missteps in minority communities across the South.

That includes the dumping of toxic chemicals into landfills and drinking water sources that are disproportionately in black, low-income communities, said Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University and author of several books on what’s been dubbed “environmental racism.”

Bullard, who led Tuesday’s meeting with EPA Region 4 Acting Administrator A. Stanley Meiburg, said his own studies have repeatedly shown that while environmental mishaps may occur throughout the country, they disproportionately occur in predominantly minority communities.

“It’s not random,” said Bullard, who led a predominantly black group that included community activists, environmental attorneys and families impacted by chemical waste.

They argued that EPA officials have been bullied into overlooking environmental transgressions, and demanded everything from apologies to families impacted by pollution to a floor-to-ceiling overall of the federal agency charged with protecting human health and the environment.

The demands come as President Barack Obama considers a permanent leader for the region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Activists have zeroed in on the region they claim is among the most impacted by pollutants like coal ash in the nation.

In a statement, EPA officials said there were “no immediate or simple answers” to the concerns raised Tuesday, but promised a commitment to examining “the disproportionate burden pollution has placed on vulnerable populations.”

“All Americans — regardless of race, age, income or gender — deserve a clean, healthy and livable community,” the statement read. “EPA is committed to this goal.”

But Bullard and others said they left with few direct answers and little hope that EPA officials were committed to major changes.

In a 2007 study, Bullard found that nationally, up to 56 percent of residents living within a 2 mile radius of commercial hazardous waste facilities were people of color.

Historically, power plants and factories have leaned toward building in low-income areas where land is cheaper and residents are perceived as less likely to put up a fight, according to Felicia Davis, an Atlanta-based activist with the Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative.

She gave Early County, Ga., as an example: Activists there question a $2 billion plan to build the state’s first new coal-fired plant in more than two decades in the 49 percent black community, despite above-average air pollution there.

“We have communities where poor people are literally being dumped on,” Davis said.

Morgan State University Saturday, October 3rd, 10am – 3:15pm

Please join the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities. along with other officials and community and business leaders, for a detailed look at the connections between and use, public health, and the environment. This one-day symposium will kick off a comprehensive state effort to better coordinate planning, development, public health assessments, and goals for sustainability–and we need your input!

The event is free and lunch will be provided–but space is limited, so please register early online or RSVP by September 28th.

Please help us spread the word by passing the attached flyer onto your colleagues. Planners, developers, community groups, environmental scientists and activists, and public health professionals should attend.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The symposium is sponsored by the Maryland Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities, Transportation Cooperative Equity Research Program Morgan State University’s School of Engineering and the Institute for Urban Research, and the Maryland Departments of the Environment, Health and Mental Hygiene, Planning, and Housing and Community Development.

Click here to register online: http://www.neighborhoodrevitalization.org/Programs/Catalyst/Catalyst.aspx#Trainings

For more information, or to RSVP, please contact Lisa Nissley at the Maryland Department of the Environment, (410) 537-4187.

Lisa Nissley
Legislative Liaison & Environmental Justice Coordinator Maryland
Department of the Environment 1800 Washington Blvd Baltimore, MD
21230
Baltimore: (410) 537-3812
Annapolis: (410) 260-6301

Understanding and Abiding by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Video courtesy of The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

Franklin Mulberry Corridor - Present and Future

Baltimorphosis.com is a cool site analyzing various plans and options for the redevelopment of the 16 block Franklin-Mulberry expressway in Baltimore.

From Baltimorphosis.com :

Once upon a time, In a proud American city, there was a neighborhood with a traffic problem. Doorsteps were barely an arms length from the traffic flooding downtown. The city came up with a plan. A freeway would be built. Traffic jams would go away…the corridor would mitigate disruption, homes and businesses would have to be cleared and land values would rise people would seem closer to their jobs. Recreation and shopping would improve. New development would sprout up…or so the city said. But something went wrong. Really wrong.P eople moved away in droves. Highway construction was abandoned before it was finished, leaving a section cut off from other highways. Most of those who left never returned. The once vibrant spirit of the area was lost form the collective memory. Today block after block languish in decay. When will the wound be healed?

JOE NATHANSON

Special to The Daily Record

June 9, 2009

What would West Baltimore’s infamous “highway to nowhere” have in common with an MTA bus depot located in East Baltimore? The Route 40/Franklin-Mulberry corridor highway tore through established neighborhoods in the 1970s. The planned connection to Interstate 70 was never finished and the incomplete stub remains a blight today in the eyes of neighboring residents.

The site selection of the Kirk Avenue bus garage right up against a low-income residential area was seen as another case of not fully considering the impacts on a disadvantaged community. Both cases provided serious material for an innovative local study that has been going for a number of years.

The Baltimore Regional Environmental Justice in Transportation Project selected those examples of public action, along with several others, to serve as case studies in its research.

What is “environmental justice?” The official introduction of “Environmental Justice” as a requirement in planning for federally funded projects came in 1994. In that year, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order requiring that fair treatment be given to all groups affected by such plans or projects.

Fair treatment means that “no group of people, including a racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic group should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences” resulting from governmental policies.

Glenn Robinson has headed the local environmental justice project from his base at Morgan State University’s Institute for Urban Research. In a recent interview, he described how the project has proceeded in phases, first conducting a series of listening sessions with the communities affected by past or impending transportation planning decisions, then organizing six case studies in and around Baltimore City.

As a result of the research effort to date, a toolkit has been prepared, offering “a bottom-up approach to environmental justice.” The kit offers grassroots community groups practical guidance in responding to grievances: Define the issue; document it by keeping written records, take photographs; rank local concerns; communicate them to appropriate agencies and, when needed, enlist help in getting agencies to explain their planning decisions.

The Baltimore Metropolitan Council also was involved in the project. The council staff works with this region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, the entity responsible for preparing the area’s long-range transportation plan.

Regina Aris, the council’s assistant director of transportation for policy, reports that participation in the project has given the planning group “the opportunity to meet with communities in the city, … all around the region, to understand their issues, frustrations” surrounding specific projects.

The Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health was another partner in the study. Dr. Michael Trush, the deputy director of the Center for Urban Environmental Health, took a particular interest in the Kirk Street bus garage.

In listening sessions with neighbors, he and his team learned about the noise, noxious fumes and other annoyances brought about by the bus depot’s proximity to the residences. The community also reported high rates of asthma and other diseases possibly linked to the bus garage operations.

As a result of investigating these conditions, the environmental justice team brought the matter to MTA officials. In earlier attempts to remedy the situation, it seemed the MTA had little will to act.

More recently, with the situation spotlighted, the MTA is committed to creating an enclosed bus facility and tree plantings as part of a program to mitigate the bad effects of the bus operations on the nearby residents.

The “highway to nowhere” is not a mere matter of history. Today the road is caught up in the discussions related to the proposed Red Line transit service, particularly as it intersects with the MARC train service to Washington in the vicinity of the West Baltimore MARC station.

Because of lingering ill will based on the 1970s actions, the local communities have only recently begun to work together and with local and state planners to incorporate the highway stub (which ends just east of the station) into plans for transit-oriented development.

As the environmental justice team Web site notes, “This connection between past and present ‘bad experiences’ argues for a case study focused on the public’s role and voice in major transportation and land use planning decisions in the Red Line/US 40 Corridor.”

This history actually requires more than a “case study.” Lessons learned since the sad story from the 1970s should be an important part of the planning and implementation of the Red Line and a key element in maintaining the promises incorporated in Mayor Sheila Dixon’s Red Line Community Compact.

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Joe Nathanson heads Urban Information Associates, Inc., a Baltimore-based economic and community development consulting firm. He writes a monthly column for The Daily Record and can be contacted at urbaninfo@comcast.net.

A video of Jacksons address is available on the Environmental Justice Blog.

View Administrator Jacksons Bio on the EPA’s website.