A Highway, a Wetland, and a Divided Community

• Author: Environmental Law Institute
• Pages: 10-11

10 NEPA Success Stories

A HIGHWAY, A WETLAND, AND A DIVIDED COMMUNITY

STEPPING BEYOND AN EIS TO COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS

In 2001, however, WEP advocates on the Eugene

City Council initiated a ballot referendum on

whether the full highway should be built. By a vote

of 51% to 49%, the voters favored building the full

highway, including the portion crossing the wet-

lands. An ODOT recommendation to build all four

segments of the WEP was subsequently approved

(amid much debate) by four jurisdictions: the Eu-

gene City Council 5-3, Lane County Commission-

ers 3-2, Springeld City Council 4-2, and the Lane

Transit District board of directors unanimously.

In 2004, however, several events changed the tone of

this ongoing debate. By summer 2004, both the US

Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land

Management indicated they had not been given

adequate information during the NEPA analysis. Be-

fore they would issue permits under the Clean Water

Act to ll wetlands and construct a highway across

federally-protected West Eugene Wetlands, the two

agencies determined that they needed to analyze

information on potential non-wetland-crossing al-

ternatives. In the same year, Eugene citizens elected a

mayor who had campaigned in part on opposition to

the WEP on the basis that alternatives had not been

considered during the NEPA analysis.

By early 2007, pro-highway business people and

pro-wetlands community members began jointly

discussing options for transportation in and through

West Eugene. ese discussions led to the formation

of the professionally-facilitated West Eugene Collab-

orative, with equal numbers of business, neighbor-

hood, environmental, and government representa-

tives. e Collaborative’s purpose explicitly allowed

for consideration of alternatives to the WEP and

encouraged development of an integrated land use

and transportation solution that would be broadly

supported by stakeholders. e Collaborative estab-

lished evaluation criteria for recommendations to be

considered during its two years of meetings. ese

criteria required that the project would likely receive

broad community support; be economically feasible;

One of the major strengths of NEPA is its require-

ment to consider alternatives, which is often the key

to breaking stalemates. In this case, a NEPA process

unlocked a twenty-year stando between a transpor-

tation agency and a land management agency with

this NEPA alternatives key.

For more than twenty years, ocials in Eugene,

Oregon pursued two initiatives with competing

objectives: (a) building a highway with federal funds

through a major wetlandsarea to relieve trac on

the major surface street in and out of west Eugene;

and (b) establishing, expanding, and protecting

the West Eugene Wetlands. ese objectives were

pursued by dierent agencies with dierent sources

of funding and with planning processes that did not

overlap. NEPA provided a way to resolve the funda-

mental mismatch.

To meet the goal of building a highway to relieve

trac in and out of west Eugene, the Oregon De-

partment of Transportation (ODOT) and Federal

Highway Administration published a draft Environ-

mental Impact Statement (EIS) in 1985. In 1997,

a supplemental draft EIS was published, recom-

mending construction of the West Eugene Parkway

(WEP), a four-lane bypass that would cross through

the wetlands. Unfortunately, the Statement of Pur-

pose and Need in the draft EIS and supplemental

draft EIS was narrowly drawn and did not consider

a non-wetlands-crossing alternative to improve

transportation in and out of west Eugene. Despite

the passage of time and the growing recognition by

other federal agencies in the early nineties of the

value of West Eugene Wetlands, the transportation

approach had remained static.

In an attempt to respond to both highway and

wetlands advocates, the local county and city govern-

ments prepared a transportation plan in 2001 that

included only one of the four segments of the full

WEP, a portion that did not cross wetlands, as a

priority transportation project.