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Mon-Fayette Expressway pros and cons are discussed
Thursday, January 17, 2002 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A preview of what to expect when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission releases its draft environmental impact statement on the Mon-Fayette Expressway project played out on the Music Hall stage at the Carnegie Library of Homestead last night.
There were environmentalists speaking about community preservation and sprawl, politicians and businessmen calling for revival of rusty Mon Valley towns, and academics and planners debating design proposals, all in a tightly scripted and choreographed panel discussion-style format that never degenerated into the kind of high-decibel farce often acted out in discussions of the $2 billion project.
State Rep. Tom Michlovic, D-North Braddock, and Mon Valley Progress Council Executive Director Joseph Kirk called the toll road an economic development project that would provide access for industry and impetus to develop old abandoned mill sites along the Monongahela River.
But others, including Jerry Patas of the Center for Economic Development, Ray Reaves and Kevin Silson of Sustainable Pittsburgh, and Walter Kulash, a consultant reviewing the road plans for PennFuture, said Mon Valley communities would benefit more from improvements and expansion of existing roads and an enhanced public transit system.
"There are serious questions about whether a toll road is the right thing for this area," Kulash said. "I think it would actually reduce the competitiveness of industrial sites in the valley because it would increase access to distant locations far more."
Cathy McCollom, chairwoman of Sustainable Pittsburgh, which sponsored the gathering, said it was aimed at educating residents about the project and getting a reading on its pros and cons.
"We want to increase the public's source of information and see if there's support, or if it should be redesigned," McCollom said. "We want people making up their minds based on facts instead of being swayed by political winds."
The meeting, attended by 150 people -- most opposed to the project -- foreshadowed the expected release in March of the turnpike commission's draft environmental impact statement, a comprehensive six-volume review of the long-term consequences of building the 24-mile section from Route 51 in Jefferson Hills north to Pittsburgh and Monroeville. It's the last section of the 70-mile toll road through Washington and Fayette counties, hooking up with Interstate 68 in West Virginia.
Release of the draft document, more than five years and 1,000 pages in the making, will kick off a public comment period that, if last night's forum was any indication, will be well used.
Tom Buchelle, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Environmental Law Clinic -- which is representing a project opposition group, Citizens for Alternatives to New Toll Roads -- said the group will ask the turnpike commission to double the 75-day public comment period.
"It will take 75 days just to read a document that long, let alone develop comments on it," he said.
Court Gould, Sustainable Pittsburgh's director, said his organization will produce its own "white paper" addressing sustainability issues raised by the expressway project.
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