Hawaii's H-3 Highway: Is It Time to Say Enough for the Environment?

Kawaguchi, Stanley K.; ,

Hawaii's H-3 Highway: Is It Time to Say Enough for the Environment?

by Stanley K. Kawaguchi, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade &, Douglas Inc, Honolulu, HI, USA,

Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Infrastructure for Urban Growth

Abstract:

If we engineers are to provide the infrastructure to meet our Nation's growth needs in an efficient and timely manner, changes need to be made to our environmental laws and regulations. We need to restore balance to our environmental laws, and one way of doing this is to return to our administrative agencies the authority to balance environmental considerations with the needs of our communities. Some of our courts have taken this function away from our administrative agencies, and the results have been decisions that lack any balancing. A case study of Hawaii's H-3 Highway shows how our court's interpretation of one of our laws, Section 4(f) of the U. S. Department of Transportation Act of 1966, as amended, has unreasonably held up a needed major highway project. Further, this H-3 decision could have other far-reaching implications for our transportation infrastructure.

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