STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN H. CHAFEE
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON TRANSPORTATION CONFORMITY

WASHINGTON, D.C.--U.S. Senator John H. Chafee (RI)--chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee--today released the following statement at a full committee hearing on transportation conformity, a program to integrate transportation projects and air quality goals.

Good Morning. I would like to welcome today's witnesses and thank them in advance for their testimony on the implementation on transportation conformity.

Although we have made significant progress in reducing transportation-related emissions, transportation emissions are still a significant portion of the air quality problem in many areas.

Transportation Conformity, the topic of today's hearing, is the odd-sounding phrase for the enforcement mechanism in the Clean Air Act designed to ensure that transportation projects fit within an area's plan for clean air.

The problems of making conformity work are most acute in those areas that most need it to work--namely, high-growth communities that simultaneously face the need for a more extensive transportation system and the need to improve air quality. Today's transportation decisions in these high-growth areas will affect air quality for decades to come.

The transportation conformity process was designed to ensure that the transportation projects and plans fit within an area's 'mobile source budget', that is, the emissions from automobiles and trucks. These emission budgets are determined by State and local governments as part of a State's Implementation Plan, or SIP, required by the Clean Air Act.

It is important to recognize that transportation conformity does not prejudge the important policy decisions of how an area will reduce air pollution. An area may decide to focus its air quality improvements on stationary sources, or on mobile source reduction strategies, such as vehicle inspection and maintenance programs that identify heavily polluting vehicles, or on non-traditional transportation improvements such as transit or "HOV" lanes.

Moreover, it is also important to recognize that transportation conformity was not designed to stop highway projects. Its goal was to ensure that transportation projects and plans are consistent with an area's overall plan for achieving clean air. Failure to do so would mean that other means of reducing emissions will need to bear a greater share of the emissions reduction burden because transportation emissions have exceeded the agreed upon plan.

In my view, transportation conformity is an important budget enforcement mechanism that enforces policy decisions already made at the state and local level through the State Implementation Plan. Even when a conformity lapse occurs, projects are halted only temporarily--until the issue causing the lapse is resolved.

One of the key purposes of today's hearing is to examine what impact a recent court decision and subsequent Federal guidance will have on the conformity process and its implications for transportation projects and programs.

Some of the key questions that I hope today's discussion will address:

1) At what point should a project be considered to be able to proceed regardless of the status of an area's air quality problems? The new conformity guidance sets the funding agreement as the grandfathering point whereas the old guidance allowed grandfathering after completion of the National Environmental Policy Act--or NEPA--process .

2) Many on the transportation side of this issue have complained about the so-called "timing mismatch" which stems from the fact that air quality plans only look a few years into the future while transportation plans are for 20 years.

3) What other areas of the conformity process could be improved?

I look forward to hearing this morning's witnesses. Thank You.