Press Release: ELPC Blows the Whistle on Departments of Transportation Trying to Stall Illiana Litigation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ELPC Blows the Whistle on Departments of Transportation Trying to Stall Illiana Litigation

ELPC continues to battle against the boondoggle Illiana Tollway, which would cost taxpayers an estimated $1.3 billion, undermine sound regional planning and harm the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. In October, ELPC submitted a statement to an Illinois federal court insisting that the U.S. Department of Transportation, Illinois Department of Transportation, and Indiana Department of Transportation should not be allowed to put the lawsuit on hold until it decides to re-do the Environmental Impact Statement analysis for the proposed tollway at some future date. ELPC argued there are no merits to the transportation departments’ claims and charged they are using it as a stalling tactic to prevent a final administrative action.

ELPC achieved a significant victory in June 2015 when U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso ruled the analysis used in the Illiana’s Tier One Environmental Impact Statement “arbitrary and capricious.”

In October, the transportation agencies asked U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle for a stay of litigation until July to give the agencies time to do additional analysis after Judge Alonso’s June decision. The agencies insist that they will perform a revised analysis when sufficient funds are made available to IDOT. Considering that Illinois is tangled up in a budget gridlock, it is unlikely those funds will materialize any time soon.

ELPC immediately blew the whistle on the transportation agencies in a statement to the federal court filed shortly after the stay of litigation was requested, asserting that a new analysis would not change the facts at the heart of the case.

ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner, who is the lead attorney representing Openlands, the Midewin Heritage Association and the Sierra Club, said, “Defendants fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of a stay, which is to put a case ‘on hold’ pending the outcome of a development that would in some way affect the outcome of the current case. This common-sense purpose is simply not met here. The fundamental issue here is the foundation has been invalidated. Tier 2 of the environmental impact statement, based on Tier 1, cannot stand. And the defendants are trying to stall.

“The second-stage environmental impact statement at the center of the suit was an administrative action which the public is allowed to appeal through the courts. Later changes to the assessment should therefore not affect the environmental group’s ability to pursue their challenge. There’s no such thing as a semi-final administrative action or a quarter-final administrative action. Once a final administrative action has been made, as it has here, it is appealable.”

ELPC will continue to monitor the transportation agencies’ actions in its continued efforts to bring the Illiana Tollway boondoggle to an end.

###