In a win for environmental groups that opposed a new highway project, the Virginia Department of Transportation has ordered its contractor to stop all work on the proposed U.S. Route 460 until federal environmental review can be completed. Permit applications submitted by the department in the fall showed that the project, which connects the Hampton Roads area with Petersburg, would impact nearly 480 acres of wetlands, a number far greater than originally estimated.
The Southern Environmental Law Center wrote a letter to the Federal Highway Administration asking that work on the 55-mile stretch of new highway be halted while the new information was reviewed. The SELC has summarily opposed the project across the Southeast corner of the state as not worth its environmental impact and not better than the alternative of improving the existing Interstate 64 from Suffolk to Petersburg.
Trip Pollard, a senior attorney with SELC, has called the new road an unnecessary, “$1.4 billion boondoggle.”
He said in a statement last week that Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration took a step in the right direction by halting the project, which was most recently backed by former governor Bob McDonnell’s administration.
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