Lawsuit filed to block Highway 100 extension

A lawsuit filed Thursday, June 2, asks a federal judge to block  construction of the Highway 100 extension in Linn County, arguing that flawed environmental reviews failed to protect the Rock Island county and state preserves.

The lawsuit argues that the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement allowing the Highway 100 “is fatally defective in its failure to comply with the requirements of NEPA (the National Environmental Protection Act.”

The Supplemental EIS  does not justify the purpose and need for the project, fails to seriously consider routes that did not go through the Rock Island County Preserve, and that environmental impacts were not adequately evaluated, the lawsuit argues.

The lawsuit was filed by the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter, Linda Biederman of Marion and Elwood Garlock of Cedar Rapids in United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa in Des Moines.

Wallace Taylor, the Cedar Rapids attorney who represents the Sierra Club, has previously cautioned that a lawsuit was possible.

Named as defendants are Ray LaHood, secretary of the United States Department of Transportation, and Lubin Quinones, division administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.

The project challenged in the lawsuit would create a four-lane beltway around the northwest part of Cedar Rapids It would extend Highway 100 (Collins Road) from its current ending at Edgewood Road west about seven miles across the Cedar River and through the Rock Island County Preserve. It would turn south in the Covington area and connect with U.S. 30 for about the same distance.

A Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the project was approved by the Federal Highway Administration in June 2008. After years of lobbying for the project by Linn County, Cedar Rapids and the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce,  it was placed in the state's five-year highway plan this year for partial land acquisition and engineering only.

Environmental impact statements are required for many types of development activities by the National Environmental Protection Act of 1969. They  assess the effects of the project on the environment, and can be a basis for canceling a proposed project.

The Rock Island preserves are considered an unusually diverse wildlife habitat, containing  the state-endangered byssus skipper and Blanding's turtle, and other rare species.

The Federal Highway Administration did not adequately determine the environmental impacts of the project, the lawsuit argues, and failed to adequately analyze its impact on traffic patterns and traffic volumes.

The only alternatives considered to the preferred route for the project were “very minor variations,” the lawsuit argues, and any alternatives that did not go through the Rock Island County Preserve were manipulated so as to be unacceptable.

Opponents of the Rock Island Preserve routing had argued that a northwest bypass of the city should extend Tower Terrace Road rather than Highway 100.

The lawsuit  describes Biederman and Garlock as residents whose use and enjoyment of the Rock Island State Preserve and Rock Island County Preserve would be adversely affected by the Highway 100 project.

The lawsuit requests a permanent injunction prohibiting any action to begin construction or preparation for construction of the Highway 100 project until a new draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is prepared. It also requests a permanent injunction to begin construction until the defendants have complied with the section of the Federal Highway Act requiring the evaluation of alternative routes.

Sierra Club Lawsuit