The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is holding an Environmental Justice Virtual Peer Exchange on July 10.
Hosted by the Center for Environmental Excellence at AASHTO, the two-hour virtual peer exchange will be broken up into two panel discussions – one focused on the connection between health and transportation and the other on Planning and Environment Linkages or PEL. The topics for the event were selected based on a recent survey of the AASHTO Environmental Justice Community of Practice.
The goal of this virtual peer exchange – which is being conducted in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations – is to provide an opportunity for transportation practitioners to learn about environmental justice, PEL, and health in transportation resources.
FHWA, state departments of transportation, and MPOs will share best practices and lessons learned related to projects and programs associated with health and transportation and PEL protocols.
As the Texas Department of Transportation works its way through a three-year study to determine why bats make their homes in certain types roadway bridges and culverts, other states are engaging in similar bat-preservation endeavors as well – especially in terms of mitigating the impact of bridge demolition and construction activity on bat populations.
For example, the southern region of New Mexico is home to year-round bat activity and Jim Hirsch, District 4 environmental analyst with the New Mexico Department of Transportation, said bats commonly hang out under bridges that span perennial waterways, such as the Rio Grande and Pecos rivers.
Top photo by Diane Winterboer for the U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture/Washington State and Oregon DOTs; Above photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
“However, they also [hang out] under bridges that span ephemeral waterways, especially those near irrigated agricultural fields,” he added. “Most bat species are not protected by federal or state law, but the New Mexico DOT recognizes their importance in the ecosystem and the benefits they provide to the agricultural industry.”
In addition, he said, New Mexico DOT “would rather manage bats with flexibility and adaptability, rather than by strict protocols and measures. It is in New Mexico DOT’s best interest to avoid listing of a bat species under the Endangered Species Act.”
Generally, Hirsch explained that the New Mexico DOT will install bat boxes under new bridges if the previous bridge supported daytime bat roosting activity. His agency will also perform bat exclusion measures if a bridge is scheduled for demolition or major rehabilitation during the “active season” for bat colonies.
“The active bat season usually coincides with the migratory bird nesting season in northern New Mexico,” he noted. “Therefore, avoidance and exclusion efforts usually protect both migratory birds and bats.”
A recent challenge faced by the agency is the cost of undertaking bat exclusion measure, as funds for such measures usually come from the limited resources of the New Mexico DOT’s environmental bureau budget. To change that, he said the department is evaluating cost effective partnerships with universities as well as with other state and federal agencies.
Research by the Texas DOT is creating a clearer picture of what specific types of bridge and culvert structures best buoy bat populations. The agency surveyed hundreds of bridges and culverts in West Texas over the last two years and found that state highway type pre-stressed concrete girder bridge designs situated near evergreen forests, deciduous forests, and standing water had a positive correlation to bat presence. Texas DOT also found that interstate highway and square box girder variables had a negative correlation on bat presence.
“These results corroborate and refine anecdotal observations from decades of Texas DOT work to attract and maintain healthy bat populations on bridges, including the placement of artificial roosts on bridges that are not the right type, but are in the right ecological setting,” noted Dr. Stirling Robertson, the biology team lead in Texas DOT’s natural resources management section.
He added that those variables differed between species of bats, which is allowing Texas DOT to target species-specific bridge design solutions.
With a better understanding of the variables attracting bats to bridges and culverts, as well as the demonstrable success of artificial roost design and placement, Texas DOT is looking for future success by applying this knowledge where appropriate across the state.
“Bridges that are in the appropriate ecological setting and that are being replaced or rehabilitated give us ideal opportunities to enhance or preserve bat colonies,” Robertson pointed out. “We can also retrofit existing structures with artificial roosts if the existing design is not bat friendly.”
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule on June 1 that it said increases the transparency and efficiency of the Clean Water Act Section 401 certification process in order to promote the timely review of infrastructure projects.
“EPA is returning the Clean Water Act certification process under Section 401 to its original purpose, which is to review potential impacts that discharges from federally permitted projects may have on water resources, not to indefinitely delay or block critically important infrastructure,” explained EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a statement.
He noted that EPA finalized this rule pursuant to the President’s Executive Order 13868 to help spur construction of important energy infrastructure projects.
The EPA said this final rule overhauls the text, structure, and legislative history of Section 401 for the first time in 50 years in several areas:
It specifies statutory and regulatory timelines for review and action on a Section 401 certification—requiring final action to be taken within one year of receiving a certification request.
It clarifies the scope of Section 401, including clarifying that 401 certification is triggered based on the potential for a project to result in a discharge from a point source into a water of the United States. When states look at issues other than the impact on water quality, they go beyond the scope of the Clean Water Act.
It reaffirms the agency’s statutory responsibility to provide technical assistance to any party involved in a Section 401 water quality certification process.
It promotes early engagement and coordination among project proponents, certifying authorities, plus federal licensing and permitting agencies.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, endorsed the EPA’s move in a June 2 statement as a way to allow important energy infrastructure projects to “get done faster.”
By contrast, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, noted in a statement on June 5 that removing environmental review processes “will not be the magic cure to our nation’s economic downturn” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There may be a new mammal vying for the title of man’s best friend – and a new study is looking into how Texas Department of Transportation bridges may be key to this profitable mammal-human connection.
Dr. Stirling Robertson, the biology team lead within Texas DOT’s natural resources management section, explained that bats help preserve the health of natural ecosystems and also provide substantial economic impacts by pollinating plants, spreading seeds and eating pests such as moths, beetles, mosquitoes, stinkbugs and termites. Some have been documented to consume as much as 85 percent of their body weight in insects every night – and bats can weigh anywhere from an ounce and a half to north of two pounds.
“Such voracious foraging on insects has definite economic impacts, especially for agricultural production,” he explained. “More than 100 million Brazilian free-tailed bats can fly nightly from caves and highway structures, like bridges and culverts, eating up all kinds of crop pests.”
In Texas’ Winter Garden Region southwest of San Antonio, a single Brazilian free-tailed bat will eat 20 insects a night. That translates to two cents per bat, per night, of ecosystem services as farmers do not need to apply additional pesticides to achieve the same yield of cotton. When extrapolated across that region, it translates to an annual “agro-economic value” on cotton ranging from $121,000 to more than $1.72 million. That’s compared to the total value of the crop in this region of $4.6 million to $6.4 million per year.
To obtain firm numbers on the economic benefits bats provide Texas and how bridge structures contribute to that benefit, the Texas DOT and Texas A&M University are in the midst of a three-year field study expected to last through May 2021 – though, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that study may need to be extended as stay-at-home orders has shelved the agency’s field research for two months.
“Finding places to hang during the day can be a critical limiting factor for many of these temperate bat species,” Robertson pointed out. “This is why learning more about how and why bats interact with our bridges is important to the distribution and abundance of these important species.”
He said that, of the 33 species of bats that live in Texas, 18 have been documented and six potentially use Texas DOT highway structures as day roosts.
Based on several scattered records, a number of different bat species use bridges and culverts statewide in summer and winter, with studies of sites and species combinations indicating that many highway structures house more than 1,000 bats.
“This sample is undoubtedly an underestimate of highway structure roost use in the state, but currently the frequency of this bat-highway structure interaction is unknown,” Robertson noted. That’s why Texas DOT began this study in partnership with Texas A&M; conducting a systematic inventory of bridges and culverts in the state to compare sites that have bats and those that don’t so experts can find what attracts bats to these structures.
Current research indicates that culverts that cross divided highways usually range about 200 to 400 feet long and are about 5 to 10 feet underground; creating “thermal qualities” that simulate the thermal qualities of caves, which could be a factor in the bat’s preference. By contrast, bridges provide numerous nooks, crannies and expansion grooves that offer tight spaces for bats to roost in.
A previous study by researchers at Boston University compared the development of Brazilian free-tailed pups raised in a cave to those raised under a bridge and found that the increased temperature of those bridges during the spring and summer resulted in pups that developed faster, weaned quicker, and had larger body sizes than those in a cave.
Undoubtedly, not all bridges or culverts are used by bats, thus Robertson hopes that Texas DOT’s ongoing study will help better illuminate the factors that attract bats to nest in them. “Better information on which bridges serve as important roosts for bats will also be extremely useful for the planning and timing of maintenance and construction of highway infrastructure,” he said.
Part 2 of this story will examine the work New Mexico DOT is doing to make its bridge structures more “bat friendly.”
In this episode of the Environmental Technical Assistance Program or ETAP podcast, host Bernie Wagenblast interviews Margaret Anderson Kelliher, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, about her state’s perspectives on environmental sustainability.
Anderson Kelliher, who serves as chair of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Committee on the Environment and Sustainability, explains on the podcast that Minnesota looks for the “triple bottom line” when evaluating sustainability: how sustainability efforts affects the health of people, how it impacts the environment, and how it impacts the economy.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) has set forth an aggressive goal of achieving 100 percent clean energy by 2050 for the state – and the New Jersey Department of Transportation will play a key role in helping attain that goal.
The agency is part of a broad statewide transportation electrification effort in line with the Rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI; a multi-state, market-based program that establishes a regional cap on carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions.
In mid-April, the governor announced that RGGI auction proceeds will provide $80 million each year to programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a new, more all-inclusive Energy Master Plan outlining several state investment strategies that aim to electrify New Jersey’s transportation sector.
Along with the Master Plan, the RGGI Strategic Funding Plan details how to move toward the goal of a greener transportation system. New Jersey’s plan for its RGGI revenue is designed to support legislation signed in January that calls for the state to have 330,000 registered electric vehicles or EVs by 2025 and 2 million by 2040. It also plans for 400 fast charging stations at 200 locations along major highways and communities by 2025.
To that end, the New Jersey DOT and several other state agencies – NJ TRANSIT, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Community Affairs, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and the Economic Development Authority – will work together within their respective areas to achieve the RGGI’s strategic goals.
The specific strategies laid out for the New Jersey DOT within the plan include:
Promoting the use of the Logo Sign Program and Tourist-Oriented Directional Signing or “LOGOS” program to display the locations of EV charging stations on blue state highway exit signs. The state will also work collaboratively with local governments on transportation planning and land use/housing planning that will enable multi-modal transportation and EV-ready infrastructure.
Working to prioritize multi-modal accommodations in projects located in low- and moderate-income and environmental justice communities to promote more pedestrian and bicycle traffic as those two modes are part of the RGGI’s emission reduction strategies.
Looking at re-evaluating “Level of Service” metrics that measure the quality of transportation services and traffic flow and develop plans to mitigate congestion and reduce idling time for vehicles.
Working with local governments to promote implementation of “Complete Streets” policies in municipalities, possibly with additional grants and incentives. As part of these efforts, the New Jersey DOT and NJ TRANSIT will continue to lead a multi-agency “Smart Growth” program called the Transit Village Initiative, which helps municipalities redevelop or revitalize their downtowns into dense communities within a half-mile of transit centers.
Deploying Transportation Systems Management & Operations or TSMO strategies to relieve road congestion through signal optimization technology; an effort funded via the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program to make traffic patterns more efficient and further reduce idling.
Yet even as New Jersey begins moving towards electrifying its transportation sector, the unintended consequences of funding shortages must also be considered.
The draft fiscal year 2020 New Jersey Transportation Capital Program, which funds both the New Jersey DOT and NJ TRANSIT for a total of $3.679 billion, depends on motor fuels tax revenues for funding – already significantly reduced due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As New Jersey encourages use of electric-powered vehicles, the state is also considering a replacement for lost fuel tax revenue and is participating in the I-95 Coalition Mileage Based User Fee study to see how such fees would affect different communities and how they would be collected.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has issued a 59-page document that provides Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial or SLTT officials – along with those of private sector and non-governmental organizations (NGO) – guidance on how to respond to both the COVID-19 pandemic and hurricanes simultaneously.
“As SLTT partners continue to prepare for hurricane season and other emergent incidents, emergency managers should review and adjust existing plans – including continuity of operations (COOP) plans – to account for the realities and risks of COVID-19 in their prioritization of life-saving and life-sustaining efforts,” FEMA said in the document.” All reviews and adjustments to plans should factor-in FEMA’s planned operational posture, social distancing measures, CDC [Centers for Disease Control] guidance, and SLTT public health guidance.”
To ensure that operational decisions are made at the lowest level possible, FEMA is organizing to prioritize resources and adjudicate accordingly, if needed:
At the incident level, Federal Coordinating Officers (FCO – in consultation with regional Administrators – will work to address incident requirements using available resources. FCOs will proactively manage and identify risks and communicate new requirements to Regional Response Coordination Center or RRCCs as they arise.
At the regional level, the RRCCs will coordinate with FEMA personnel deployed to SLTT emergency operation centers and adjudicate resource requests until operational control is ready to be transitioned to the FCO at the incident level, when designated, and will adjudicate resources within their area of operation and coordinate with other RRCCs and the National Response Coordination Center (NRCC) as required.
At the national level, the NRCC will coordinate with the regions on requirements and adjudicate resources to address national priorities.
The Hawaii Department of Transportation is looking at a range of studies that examine how the potential for sea level rise (SLR) due to climate change could impact transportation infrastructure.
The most recent study, published in March of 2020 examined how direct marine inundation – which is when sea water levels rising above the current land levels – could affect Hawaii’s infrastructure but also at the impact of groundwater inundation, known as GWI.
GWI describes flooding that occurs as groundwater is lifted above the elevation of the ground surface and buried infrastructure; a difficult flooding type to manage since groundwater flooding cannot be stopped by coastal barriers such as sea walls.
That study – conducted by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology – predicts that sea level rise will likely cause large percentages of Hawaiian land area to be impacted GWI, with Shellie Habel, lead author of the study, noting that the results “highlight the need to readjust our thinking regarding the flooding that accompanies sea level rise.”
Ed Sniffen, Hawaii DOT’s deputy director for highways and chair of AASHTO’s Committee on Transportation System Security and Resilience, estimated in a previous report that it would cost around $15 billion to protect all of the state’s coastal highways from the rising seas. The figure assumed $7.5 million for every mile of road that will need to escape erosion in the next 50 to 100 years and $40 million for every mile of bridge.
The agency began a vulnerability study in December 2019 to develop a comprehensive inventory of “potential extreme weather impacts” to Hawaii’s highway system; impacts that include GWI, SLR, and other natural disasters such as rockfalls and landslides.
Photo courtesy of Hawaii DOT
That’s in addition to a statewide assessment of SLR impacts conducted in 2017, which resulted in the Hawaii Sea Level Rise Vulnerability and Adaptation Report. That report predicted a 3.2-foot rise in global sea levels by 2100, one that could be reached as early as year 2060 under more recently published scenarios. Chronic flooding with 3.2 feet of SLR could result in approximately 25,800 acres of land in the Hawaii unusable, with roughly 34 percent of that potentially lost land containing a large amount of highway infrastructure in Maui, Oahu, and Kauai alone.
Currently, over 38 miles of major roads could be chronically flooded across the Hawaiian Islands, ranging from residential roads to sections of coastal highways such as Kamehameha Highway on Oahu.
And much of that flooding could be from GWI rather than just direct marine inundation, thus not stoppable by traditional sea walls, which is why the Hawaii DOT is looking closely at creative engineering mitigation strategies for all flooding mechanisms for highways and bridge foundations.
Part of the agency’s flood mitigation planning is based on a study conducted for the Hawaii DOT by the University of Hawaii – called State Coastal Highway Program Report – released in August 2019. That report uses a new, detailed formula developed by the university to rank nearshore roads in order of urgency. Most of its suggested mitigation efforts focus on either “hardening” the roads and bridges or relocating them all together to higher ground.
As a result, for the next two decades or so, the Hawaii DOT plans to strengthen and maintain the roadways as they are in place. For the future, it is also looking at elevating roadways and even relocating highways further inland and tunneling through parts of mountains to make that happen. For instance, elevating the highway on Oahu’s Windward side could involve raising the road as high as nine feet. An alternative solution would be to relocate the highway further inland which would likely include tunneling through parts of the Koolau mountains at greater cost, the agency noted.
