Posted on 12/30/2016 4:36:56 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
DENVER (CBS4)– Federal authorities told the Colorado Department of Transportation and opponents of the planned Interstate 70 expansion this week that it would open an investigation into claims the project violates the Civil Rights Act.
The pending investigation comes in response to a federal complaint filed with the U.S Department of Transportation by Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, and neighborhood groups impacted by the project, including the Cross Community Coalition, Colorado Latino Forum and Elyria-Swansea Neighborhood Association. Filed last month, the complaint alleges CDOT’s plan will result in “disparate and severe environmental and economic impacts” on the predominantly Latino communities.
Candi CdeBaca, who revived the Cross Community Coalition one year ago to fight the planned widening of the interstate and is a named complainant, considers the response progress in a years-long battle against the plan. She says she’ll meet with investigators from the Federal Highway Administration who are traveling from Washington, D.C. to Denver early next week.
“Any attention paid to this issue is a win for us,” CdeBaca said, “because we’ve been ignored for so long and our voices have been silenced.”
CDOT is nearing the final planning stages on its $1.2 billion proposal to remove the existing I-70 viaduct between Colorado and Brighton Boulevards, lower the highway approximately 30 feet below grade, and add toll lanes.
According to the complaint, I-70 was built in the area over the objections of residents. Construction of the planned expansion would “increase exposure to freeway-related air pollution and expose residents to airborne dust from existing Superfund sites that are contaminated by lead and arsenic.” CdeBaca says the plan would triple the highway’s size.
“It’s discrimination because the neighborhood is over 80 percent Latino, it’s historically been a low-income neighborhood, often immigrant neighborhood,” CdeBaca said. “We’re being taken advantage of, our lack of financial, political, and human and social capital are being exploited right now.”
As the investigation is launched, CDOT will continue to move forward with the project.
“It has reached the end of its lifespan and it’s no longer a situation where we can continue to study this for years and years,” White said of the viaduct bridge, which was built in 1964.
She says CDOT has been sensitive to community members’ concerns – something CdeBaca disputes – and is proud of the work its done to seek residents’ input. An environmental study into impacts is nearly complete and CDOT has started the procurement process in the public-private partnership endeavor.
In response to questions of health and pollution concerns, White says the work would comply with environmental regulation and CDOT feels confident it can do the project while “protecting the safety of everyone.”
“We feel like this is a really good solution for the community and for our traveling public,” White said, adding, “There’s a mix of perspectives and I would expect that, this is a huge project, it’s a huge project for CDOT, it’s a huge project for the state, so you’re never going to have a consensus on the right solution.”
Opponents hope the investigation eventually forces CDOT to reconsider alternatives, like re-routing traffic through I-270 and I-76, which CdeBaca supports. A federal lawsuit, focusing on air quality concerns and separate from this complaint, is pending against the project.
“We are looking forward to making the case that CDOT’s proposal magnifies the already discriminatory impact that I-70 has had on these neighborhoods for decades, leading to reduced life expectancies and the highest rates of pollution-related illnesses in the city,” said Heidi McIntosh, an attorney at Earthjustice.
That last phrase is a dead giveaway that this is a social justice warrior of the worst sort. Something she learned at college.
Once we deport all the illegal aliens, the community will be smaller as will the impact of the Interstate.
There is plenty of room to rebuild the community east of DIA.
So they show the way.
We have Judicial Watch sue Earthjustice, National Council of La Raza, and the entire alphabet soup of hispanic agitation organizations for their disparate impact on the vulnerable Anglo populations.
We can show loss of habitat, degradation of lifestyle, irreparable harm to neighborhoods and cultural defamation due to their wave of crime and influx into our cities and states.
Time to take the fight right back to them. In a month, the US DoJ will be on our side.
Yep.....highway construction delays, cancellations and quotas..just another by product of race in this country
They wouldn’t be the poor “downtrodden” if they took on a job and carried their own weight in society. Perhaps they could get jobs in highway construction.
Once the illegals have been deported from Denver the I-70 upgrade won’t be such a problem for the 300 remaining Latinos.
`Latinos’ pantaloons in twists’
Eminent domain. It’s how Ike got the interstate highway system built with the justification/public purpose of national security.
And it’s how Trump will build the wall.
Difference? Mexico gets the bill for the wall every day by reduction of remittances sent home by `latinos’.
Once we start dumping foreign felons back over the border, things will start getting better. Then we can move on to jardin-variety lawbreakers, like these whingers.
LOL!
The stupidity of the Claim is hilarious.
Lunacy
Reminds me of Memphis in which I-40 was supposed to go straight through, but was looped around because of “special” neighborhoods.
On the other hand, Nashville had no problems with “special” neighborhoods being in the way of I-40. They just plowed right through.
One thing liberals can never answer when immigration is the subject. Name 1 city that the phrase “population is dangerously low” applies to. Which city would be improved with even more people and traffic? Which suburb would be made better if it was even bigger and sprawlier? Which rural town would be better if it became a city, and sprouted its own suburbs? Would environmental problems increase or decrease if we added millions of people with a third grade education level?
I am a delivery driver-courier in Denver and the state of Colorado. I travel that section of road about 500 times per year. The housing in that neighborhood is pathetic. All the State probably needs to do is pay double what the houses are worth and then demolish all the houses within 200 yards of the construction. No body who lives next to the interstate in that stretch of road wants to be there. They would gladly leave if they could afford to live anywhere else. With double the money, they could move to Commerce City or East Denver or and other low income neighborhood that is far better than the houses right next to the elevated interstate. Seriously, no one who could do better would want to live there now.
When we in Milwaukee WI needed to update and make safer two major highway interchanges in the last ten years, we were hit with very similar federal lawsuits. Then it was the Blacks suing for alleged discrimination. It was alleged the 1960s highway construction went more through those neighborhoods so it was discrimination. As we were updating the interchanges, the past discrimination could be raised. Also, it was said Blacks had less access to cars when commuting so the updates helped we rich Whites more.
Absurd? Well, the suit got settled by big payoffs to the plaintiff lawyers, money to Black run community action groups and grants to the local bus system.
privatize all interstates
It sounds like you are letting fact get in the way of an activist Social Warrior cause.
The highway is where the highway is - which has been a long time.
Construction of I-70 through Denver began in 1961 and the latest Denver segment was done in 1977. There is a very good chance that housing in many of the areas activists are suing over came AFTER I-70 construction began, during waves of “Latino” “immigration since the 1980s.
The fact of who lives adjacent to I-70, where it needs to be widened is MOST likely just a mere happenstance of long settled history of where I-70 was built, not “discrimination”. Only under Obama’s unconstitutional “disparate impact” legal theory would the DOJ take this case. Trump’s DOJ will drop it.
At least your Marquette interchange is finished. When I drove through it in 2007, I couldn’t get onto I-794 from I-94/I-43 because some of the ramps were closed.
The Zoo interchange rebuild, on the other hand, goes on and on and on . . .
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