U.S. Postal Service (USPS) workers load mail in delivery trucks outside the Royal Oak, Michigan, August 22, 2020.
Rebecca Cook Reuters
Sixteen states sued the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday over its plan to replace its obsolete supply fleet with thousands of gas-powered vehicles over the next decade, alleging the agency did not adequately address environmental damage from vehicles. They were joined by several other government agencies, environmental and labor groups.
The lawsuits claim that the postal service’s environmental analysis, which justifies spending up to $ 11.3 billion on gas trucks that receive only 8.6 miles per gallon, is deeply flawed.
The postal service has about 230,000 vehicles, representing about a third of the country’s entire federal fleet. His plan to buy gas trucks will blunt President Joe Biden’s promise to replace the federal fleet of 600,000 cars and trucks with electricity and reduce the government’s carbon emissions by 65% by 2030. The administration has promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The United States is almost halfway through the end of the decade and the economy is transitioning to net zero emissions by 2050.
In February, the EPA and the White House Environmental Quality Council called on the postal service to conduct an updated and more detailed technical analysis and hold a public hearing on its plan.
However, the postal service later that month met a final regulatory requirement that would allow it to accept the first of the new vehicles next year. The agency’s plan converts only 10% of its new trucks to electricity, far below the promises of Amazon and UPS, which have a large supply fleet.
The lawsuit alleges that the plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act and should be repealed. The lawsuit alleges that gas postal vehicles will prevent states from fulfilling their own promises on climate change.
“The postal service has a historic opportunity to invest in our planet and in our future,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. “Instead, it doubles outdated technologies that are bad for our environment and bad for our communities.”
“Once this purchase is made, we will be stuck with more than 100,000 new gas vehicles on neighborhood streets serving homes in our state and across the country for the next 30 years,” Bonta said. “There will be no reset button.”
Despite the increase in sales of electric vehicles in recent years, the transport sector is one of the largest contributors to the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about a third of total emissions each year.
Postal Service spokeswoman Kim Froome said the agency “conducted a stable and in-depth review and fully complied with all our NEPA obligations”.
“We need to make fiscally sound decisions when it comes to introducing a new fleet,” Froome wrote in an email. “We will continue to look for opportunities to increase the electrification of our supply fleet responsibly, in line with our operational strategy, the deployment of appropriate infrastructure and our financial situation, which we expect to continue to improve as we pursue our plan.”
The state of California is joined in the lawsuit by Attorney Generals in Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wagon and Road Island; as well as the city of New York and the Gulf Air Quality Management Area.
Two separate lawsuits were filed by the environmental groups CleanAirNow, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, with legal representation from Earthjustice; and by the Council for the Protection of Natural Resources with the United Automobile Workers.
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