U.S. Transportation Secretary Mineta Announces 13 Environmental Excellence Awards |
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Topics: Norman Y. Mineta
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Federal Highway Administration
April 17, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Contact: Lori Irving
Telephone: 202-366-0660
FHWA 17–01
U.S.
Transportation Secretary Mineta today announced the 13 winners of the Federal
Highway Administration’s (FHWA) 2001 Environmental Excellence Awards.
“President
Bush is committed to a cleaner environment, and his budget will help to
continue the progress this country has made in safeguarding our land, our
water and our air,” Secretary Mineta said.
“These award winners have gone far beyond ‘business as usual’ in
continuing the country’s progress in protecting the environment.”
Started
in 1995, these biennial FHWA awards recognize partners, projects, and
processes that achieve environmental excellence.
This year’s winners range from the ambitious streamlining of
environmental reviews in Pennsylvania to an innovative landscape-design tool
in Minnesota and a unique bicycle-pedestrian trail in Puerto Rico.
“These
public-private efforts are good examples of environmental stewardship and
successful partnering,” says FHWA Deputy Executive Director Vincent
Schimmoller. “They inspire us to act responsibly, protecting and enhancing
the environment without compromising mobility or causing financial
hardship.”
The
2001 Environmental Excellence Award recipients are from California, Florida,
Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia
and Puerto Rico. Recipients from
Arizona, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, and Texas received honorable mention.
FHWA
received 145 nominations from 31 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of
Columbia. An independent panel of
judges selected winners for 11 categories: Air Quality Improvement, Cultural
Resources, Environmental Leadership, Environmental Research, Environmental
Streamlining, Livable Communities, Non-Motorized Transportation, Recycling,
Scenic Byways, Vegetation Management and Wetlands, Water Quality and Ecosytems.
For the Livable Communities category, the judges selected an urban winner and
a rural winner. For the Environmental Leadership category, they named a group
winner and an individual winner.
Schimmoller
and FHWA Planning and Environment Program Manager Cynthia Burbank will present
the awards at an Earth Day ceremony on April 20 in Washington, D.C.
The
following is a list of the award recipients:
The
Compressed Natural Gas Refueling Station (Air Quality Improvement), New York
People who live in New
York’s Syracuse-Onondaga County are breathing cleaner air, thanks in part to
this unique indoor “gas station” that refuels compressed natural gas
buses. An outdoor station on the same site refuels CNG cars and trucks.
Contact: George Angelero,
telephone 315-428-4351 or email gangel@gw.dot.state.ny.us
“Giving Something Back – The
Reed Farmstead Site” (Cultural Resources), West Virginia
An integrated range of media, including videos, on-site tours, classroom
visits, and two nationally-acclaimed websites, tell the story of
Appalachia’s 19th-century Reed Farmstead archaeological site and
its West Virginia heritage.
Contact: Joe
Deneault, telephone 304-558-0191, email
jdeneault@dot.state.wv.us or
visit Reed Farmstead’s website at www.kidsdigreed.com
Gary L. Evink (Environmental
Leadership, individual award), Florida
In his 25 years
with the Florida Department of Transportation, Evink has excelled as a state,
national, and international environmental leader. Wildlife crossings,
international ecology conferences, environmental fairs for teachers,
participation on the Governor’s Commission for a Sustainable South Florida
and increasing investment in FDOT’s environmental research to more than $1
million a year number among his accomplishments.
Contact: Dick Kane,
telephone 850-414-4595 or email dick.kane@dot.state.fl.us
Mare
Island Accord (Environmental Leadership—group award), California
To resolve
environmental issues before project development, EPA, FHWA, and Caltrans came
up with a joint, performance-based action plan for improved interagency
communication. The plan
identified specific partnership initiatives to be accomplished within one year
and set up a steering committee to track their progress and report on the
results.
Contacts: (Caltrans)
Ray Becker. Telephone 559-488-4067 or email ray_becker@dot.ca.gov;
(EPA) Lisa Fasano,
telephone 415-744-1587 or email fasano.lisa@epa.gov
Route 21 Freeway Extension (Livable
Communities—urban award), New Jersey
When the last link
of Route 21 in North New Jersey is completed, local residents will have a new
neighborhood park extending under the roadway, access to the river’s edge
(previously blocked by an industrial canal), a new rose garden on the site
where the “American Beauty” was developed and more.
Contact:
Jeff Maclin, telephone 609-530-4280 or email jeffmaclin@dot.state.nj.us
Highway
197 Environmental Assessment Process (Livable Communities -- rural award),
Minnesota
Safer pedestrian
crossings, brightly-colored city-entrance monuments, a “shoreline protection
plan,” an historic bridge converted to bike, pedestrian, and snowmobile use
are some of the amenities Bemidji, Minn., residents will gain when a 1.5-mile
section of highway is reconstructed along the lakeshore.
Contact: Jeanne
Aamodt, telephone 651-297-3597 or email jeanne.aamodt@dot.state.mn.us
CD-ROM Expert
System for Selection of Roadside Landscape Plants (Environmental Research),
Minnesota
In Minnesota,
users of this new landscape-design tool can identify the right plant for the
right site for the right functions. They
can find 650 plants correlated with up to 49 fields of
information—information they can get faster and more accurately than ever
before. More than 1,600 CDs are now in use across the state.
Contact: Jeanne Aamodt.
State Route 119 South Improvement
Project (Environmental Streamlining), Pennsylvania
It usually takes years
to complete the environmental impact statement required for
transportation projects. It only took 22 months on this highway-widening project in
Indiana County. Strategies such as concurrent electronic reviews,
reader-friendly graphics, and a community advisory committee proved the
effectiveness of new PennDOT EIS guidelines.
Contact: Jim
Struzzi, telephone 724-357-2829 or email jstruzz@dot.state.pa.us
NCDOT and Habitat for Humanity
Partnership (Recycling), North Carolina
Last year on NCDOT
right-of-way, Habitat for Humanity of Wake County partially deconstructed
three houses scheduled for demolition, keeping debris away from the landfill.
The salvaged materials, such as appliances and carpeting, went to
Habitat’s re-use center for resale to the public and low-income families.
Ryan Jacoby,
telephone 919-833-6768, ext. 230, or email ryan@habitatwake.org
Shooting Star Wildflower Route and
Scenic Byway (Scenic Byways), Minnesota
Only one percent of
tallgrass prairie remains in Minnesota. Along Highway 56 in the southern part
of the state, community-led teams are restoring the prairie remnants
(including habitat for the “shooting star” wildflower) using controlled
burns instead of mowing and herbicide-spraying. Contact: Jeanne Aamodt.
Adirondack
Park Non-Native Invasive Plant Species Project (Vegetation Management), New
York
In New York’s
6-million acre Adirondack Park, roadside pockets of invasive plants won’t
get a chance to spread and choke out native plants vital to the local
ecosystem because participants in this project are pulling the invaders up by
hand, burying them under geotextile fabric, and covering the area with
weed-free straw mulch.
Contact:
John Dean, telephone 315-793-2787 or email jdean@gw.dot.state.ny.us
Louie-Beach
Advance Wetland Compensation Site (Wetlands, Water Quality, and Ecosystems),
Pennsylvania
This 40-acre
wetland, named after two equipment operators involved in the earthwork, took
just over three months to build and cost only about $3,000 an acre. For years to come it will improve local water quality and be
a new home for a variety of fish and wildlife species.
Contact: Kelly
Whitaker, telephone 814-696-7106 or email kwhitak@dot.state.pa.us
The Piñones Trail (Non-Motorized
Transportation), Puerto Rico
San Juan residents
no longer have to rely on a car to get to the beach.
They can walk or bike there on an 11-kilometer elevated boardwalk, and
along the way they can visit an observation tower and several visitor centers.
Night use of the trail is prohibited to protect nesting sea turtles.
Contact: Iris
Rivera-Ortiz, telephone 787-723-3245 or email ierivera@act.dtop.gov.pr
The
judges in the 2001 awards competition also gave honorable mention to the
following:
Iowa
Transportation Map for Bicyclists (Non-Motorized Transportation, Iowa)
This innovative map
helps bicyclists find the road routes in Iowa that best meet their
transportation needs and level of experience.
U.S. 93 Realignment (Scenic Byways),
Arizona
When scenic byway
U.S. 93 between Wickenburg and Kingman was widened to improve safety, its
natural beauty and environmental integrity were preserved.
Wetland Ponds,
Brighton-Henrietta Town Line Road (Wetlands, Water Quality, & Ecosystems),
New York
In this Monroe
County project, multi-agency teams worked with local residents to enhance a
degraded wetland, improve water quality, and minimize the impacts of storm
water runoff on a nearby stream system.
Texas Department of
Transportation’s Mitigation Bank Program (Wetlands, Water Quality, &
Ecosystems)
The Texas
Department of Transportation has created three wetland mitigation banks
(Anderson Tract, Blue Elbow Swamp, and Coastal Bottomlands) to use on future
transportation projects. The program is a practical, cost-effective, and
environmentally friendly alternative to traditional, project-by-project
mitigation.
Flanders Brook Stream Relocation
(Wetlands, Water Quality, & Ecosystems), New Jersey
Flanders Brook is a
pristine wild trout stream along Route 206 in Morris County. When safety
improvements were added to the highway, contractors, state agencies, and
volunteers worked together to relocate a 200-foot section of the stream
without hurting the fish or their habitat.