Sixteen states, as well as several prominent climate activists, sued the United States Postal Service this week over its plan to buy 148,000 gas trucks over the next decade, claiming the agency did not take into account the environment’s environmental impact. your decision.
The United States accuses the USPS of conducting only a “cursory environmental review to justify the decision to replace 90 percent of its fleet of supplies with vehicles with internal combustion engines powered by fossil fuels, despite other available, environmentally preferred alternatives.” says in the trial. “At the same time, the postal service failed to meet even the most basic requirements of [National Environmental Policy Act]”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by the Attorney General of California, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Wagon, Road , Washington, DC, and New York City.
The USPS, led by Chief of Staff Louis DeJ, is at odds with environmentalists over the need to electrify the agency’s fleet. After many years of bidding, the USPS unveiled its next-generation mail truck in February 2021, which will be manufactured by Oshkosh Defense. They will replace the current mail trucks, which have been in operation for more than two decades, and were built by another defense contractor, Grumman.
The postal service initially said it would buy 165,000 next-generation mail trucks, only 10 percent of which would be cordless electric vehicles. President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress called on the agency to increase the number of electric vehicles, but the USPS decided there was no legal reason to change its plans. But earlier this year, the service said it would increase its initial order for electric vehicles from 5,000 to 10,019, saying it “makes good sense from an operational and financial point of view.”
Rapid Environmental Review
However, the states accuse the USPS of relying on misjudgment and an incomplete process to acquire gas-powered vehicles that earn only 8.6 miles per gallon while using air conditioning, compared to an industry average of between 12 and 14 mpg for fleet vehicles.
In response, the USPS defended its practices, noting that it remains open to increasing its order for more electric vehicles in the future, if additional funding is available.
“The postal service is fully committed to including electric vehicles as a significant part of our supply fleet, although the investment will cost more than a vehicle with an internal combustion engine,” a spokesman said in an email. “So, as we have said many times, we need to make fiscally sound decisions when it comes to introducing a new fleet.”
Congress recently approved a $ 50 billion bailout package for the USPS, which has lost more than $ 90 billion since 2007. DeJoy has proposed billions of dollars in funding cuts and slower deliveries of first-class mail as new standards.
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