Group says health issues should stop 95 widening

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 | 11:16 a.m.

Expansion talk

Who: The Federal Highway Administration and Nevada Department of Transportation.

What: Public meeting to discuss design work and other issues of the U.S. 95 expansion.

When: Thursday, 4 to 7 p.m.

Where: The YMCA, 4141 Meadows Lane.

A national environmental group has sued to stop the widening of U.S. 95 in the northwest Las Vegas Valley.

The Sierra Club argues that the Federal Highway Administration and the Nevada Department of Transportation must take into account new research that shows people who live near highways have an increased risk of cancer and other health problems.

Joanne Spalding, Sierra Club attorney, said the lawsuit is a test case that could affect other highway building projects in the Southwest and throughout the nation.

Spalding, activists and a local pediatrician held a news conference outside Ruth Fyfe Elementary School, adjacent to the freeway near Valley View Boulevard, to announce the lawsuit.

Federal and state highway officials said the suit lacks merit and they will continue with the road-widening, which started last year. Some parts are largely completed, including expanding the four-lane highway to six lanes from Washington Avenue to Cheyenne Avenue.

But construction on the heart of the project, to expand U.S. 95 from six lanes to 10 lanes by 2006 from the Spaghetti Bowl to Washington Avenue, is scheduled to begin in summer 2003 and end in 2006.

The work is now in the design phase, and will continue unless a court intervenes, the road officials said.

"This is typically the way a lot of environmental groups do these things -- to just try to delay things," Kent Cooper, Nevada Department of Transportation assistant director, said.

Cooper and John Price, Federal Highway Administration division administrator, said the time for environmental groups to challenge the project's environmental status has passed.

Like other big, federally funded projects, the $440 million U.S. 95 widening required a formal Environmental Impact Statement. The assessment included analysis of various alternatives -- including doing no road work at all -- and concluded that the highway expansion was necessary to avoid gridlock because of the booming population in the valley's northwest.

The Sierra Club has twice asked the Federal Highway Administration to reopen the environmental assessment process, and twice the agency has declined. Price said the group's request relied on unproven studies that did not directly translate to the situation in Las Vegas.

The transportation officials argued that failing to do the work would worsen air pollution because of emissions from cars stuck in traffic. Also, the highway expansion includes car-pool lanes and plans for increased mass transit, which would ideally reduce the volume of cars on U.S. 95.

The alternatives are not enough, the environmentalists said. Spalding and allies with the local chapter of the Sierra Club said federal law requires the transportation agencies to include recent studies on the health impacts of proximity to tailpipe emissions.

"We have shown that the impact will be significant," Spalding said. "We want Federal Highway Administration to take that information and study it."

Ronald Rosen, a doctor specializing in children's cancers, said the studies show that living, working or studying near heavily traveled highways can cause cancer in more than 1,400 people in every million, or 1.4 people in 1,000.

"We do know that high-density traffic and air pollution pose a risk for cancer," Rosen said. He said children could be particularly susceptible to exposure to pollution from traffic.

Leana Hildebrand, a local Sierra Club spokeswoman, said the increased risk of cancer could affect three schools, two community centers, a day care center, 27 apartment buildings and more than 380 homes.

She said she grew up in neighborhoods that would be affected by the road expansion.

"We need to be sure our neighborhoods are protected," Hildebrand said.

Cathy Razor, a consultant working on the expansion project for contractor PBS&J, argued that slowing the work also will affect thousands of people in the northwest who commute to work along the busy highway.

"People are really, really anxious to get this going now," Razor said. "We just have so much support to do this. ... It's amazing. You just have to look at all those people every day, sitting out there in their cars."