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Bad air could delay major freeway projects

BY JAMES BURGER and JAMES GELUSO, Californian staff writers
e-mail:jburger@bakersfield.com, jgeluso@bakersfield.com | Wednesday, Jul 9 2008 5:13 PM

Last Updated: Thursday, Jul 10 2008 6:31 AM

Dust storms that fouled Kern County’s air in May could mean months of delay for two major Kern County freeway projects.

A project to widen Highway 46 from Holloway Road west to Highway 33 at Blackwells Corner will almost certainly be delayed for five months or more, said Ron Brummett, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments.

And the Westside Parkway in Bakersfield, a freeway that’s to run west from a point near Highway 99 to Heath Road, might also be delayed if dickering over air quality standards goes on too long.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Brummett said, is worried the dust storms pushed the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District out of attainment with air pollution standards.

State air officials are being forced to delay a pollution analysis while EPA looks at the situation.

And KernCOG can’t ask the state to release road-building money to a project until that analysis process is complete and blessed by the EPA, Brummett said.

The Highway 46 project — part of a multi-phase widening of the two-lane freeway from Highway 99 to San Luis Obispo County — was due to have a groundbreaking in January 2009 and a construction start in March, Brummett said.

Those dates will likely be delayed five months.

A second phase of the widening, from Kecks Road to the county line, was planned to follow the first phase and could be delayed as well.

Delays on the Westside Parkway are not as certain.

City of Bakersfield engineer Ted Wright said he doesn’t expect the move to affect progress on the Westside Parkway. The first phase — extension of Mohawk Street across the Kern River to Rosedale Highway — is slated to be bid out in September, with construction starting around January.

The money for that is from the state, he said, not federal ones passed on through the state.

Joe Stramaglia of KernCOG said it is still possible the federal government could block the project when the city goes to the California Transportation Commission in August to ask for the $69 million it needs to build the Mohawk Street extension.

If that happens, the Westside Parkway could face an even longer delay than Highway 46.

Brummett said the projects could face more than simple delays if the EPA rules that Kern County is out of containment with air pollution standards.

KernCOG would then have to revise its funding scheme to flow more money to low-pollution projects like transit.

Brummett said it isn’t likely such a re-drafting of road priorities will happen.