WABA writes
Mayor Fenty, at the urging of Councilmember Jim Graham, has inserted $2 million into the proposed FY09 DC budget for construction of a road through Klingle Valley. Concerned about the pace of the EIS process (a draft EIS has already been circulated for public comment), they propose to circumvent all environmental reviews, and to give up all federal matching funds! Thus, they would pay for 100% of the project - now pegged at $12 million (up from $2 million) - with DC funds, instead of the typical 20% local share with an 80% federal match.
WABA, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Audubon Naturalist Society, and other local groups are fighting this proposal, which will be decided in the next two weeks. We need emails to be sent to the Council urging them not to invest diminishing DC funds into this overpriced "road to nowhere," which DC Dept. of Transportation studies show will produce no positive effects on traffic flows in Ward 3. Please send an email to * all 13 Council offices * at this address: [email protected].
We will also be conducting public education activities (tabling) outside the Wilson Building for the next three weeks at lunchtime. If you can spare a couple of fun hours in the sun, or for further information, contact Jim Dougherty at 202-488-1140, [email protected].
Update: It seems like you did it heroes. Via GGW city paper is predicting that the measure is dead.
Brown’s conviction also means that the mayor’s $2 million Klingle Road line item isn’t going to make it out of the council’s committee on public works and the environment. Committee chair and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham favors spending the money, as does Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, but the other three committee members—Mary Cheh of Ward 3, Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, and Brown—are all now unequivocally on the record against it.
Look for that $2 million to be directed elsewhere at the committee’s April 30 budget markup.
City Paper has brief refresher on the issue too.
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