Just about everyone who first learns about the decades-long Burke-Gilman Missing Link legal battle is baffled when they hear that this delay is under the guise of “environmental review.” It’s a biking and walking trail! Isn’t safer biking and walking inherently good for the environment?
They’re not wrong. A process that should prevent degradation of the environment was instead being used to prevent the city from completing a project that would improve the environment, and that’s just nonsense. The process puts proposed projects on trial, but not the status quo. And the status quo can be pretty terrible to the environment.
To be clear, “environmental” in this legal sense is defined very broadly, including things like traffic and economic impacts, supposed negatives that can sometimes work against what the average person might associate with the term “environment.” When massive freeway projects like the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement and the 520 Bridge Replacement Projects cruise through faster than a mile of biking and walking trail, there is a serious problem with the process.
The other problem is that environmental appeals are a tool available almost solely to wealthy individuals, groups and businesses. And it is so effective at delaying projects that even the threat of an appeal can get wealthy interests what they want as we saw clearly on Westlake. (more…)