A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday morning for why construction on the should be halted just as concrete barriers and giant earth-moving equipment are about to be rolled into place to build new toll lanes for the heavily used suburban thoroughfare.
Attorney David Steinberger, representing a collection of nearly 100 Highlands Ranch households living alongside the four-lane highway, argued in court that for more than a year and a half his clients have been trying unsuccessfully to get the Colorado Department of Transportation to do a proper noise study and have challenged .
He claimed CDOT hasn’t done the long-term noise analysis and modeling required of it by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and that the public hasn’t had the opportunity to fully weigh in on the issue. The neighbors, , came out in force Tuesday to hear the arguments before U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore.
Moore didn’t say when he will decide on whether to order a preliminary injunction on any highway work, though he indicated it would be soon.
One of the neighbors involved in the lawsuit against CDOT and the Federal Highway Administration, which is partially funding the 12.5-mile project, said noise from C-470 is so loud in his Highgate neighborhood that his kids can’t hear him when he calls to them in the backyard. He worries about how much worse it will get with extra lanes of traffic moving in each direction.
“It gets really loud,” Brian Gates said outside the courthouse in downtown Denver. “I sometimes have to close the windows and turn on the air-conditioning in the summer so I can hear my TV.”
Gates said he’s not just worried about the impacts traffic noise will have on the value of his home but about the quality of life over the next few decades.
“I’m going to be there for 30 years,” he said.
Marcy Cook, an assistant attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office who is representing the Federal Highway Administration in the case, argued in court that highway officials did what they were required to do in terms of noise analysis. She also said all protocols on public notification and input have been strictly followed over the past three years as the project has moved forward.
The government and the plaintiffs, she said, simply disagree on their interpretation of CDOT’s guidelines in terms of what they say about required noise tests and the data modeling needed to make determinations about auditory impacts 20 years down the road. Re-opening the NEPA public process to analyze additional noise data could set the start of the project back another half a year or more, Cook said, and cost taxpayers $35,000 a day during the delay.
She said construction will be in full swing within a “couple of months,” barring any work stoppages.
Moore wrestled with the idea that a small group of Highlands Ranch residents might hold up a major regional road project serving thousands of people a day while at the same time costing taxpayers money in penalties and fines. But he also questioned whether CDOT was being too casual in its interpretation of its guidelines and essentially using its sheer weight as a public agency to achieve its ends.
Steinberger argued that if CDOT is permitted to start construction on the highway with the neighbors’ concerns unaddressed it would be the equivalent of the “train leaving the station.” CDOT should not be allowed to set a poor precedent by initially failing to adhere to NEPA requirements and then being allowed to make concessions on the fly “when it is called to task,” he said.
Carter Sales, who heads up the Highlands Ranch Neighborhood Coalition, told The Denver Post that he and his neighbors are not against the C-470 expansion in principle, which would add up to two tolled express lanes to the westbound side of the highway and one tolled express line to the eastbound side.
“We object to a CDOT noise model that has not been properly validated according to CDOT guidelines,” he said. “Without the long-term readings, we contend that the noise model is flawed and noise abatement recommendations cannot be made with a flawed noise model.”
