God for them. The USPS needs to be moving away from gasoline powerd trucks:
The Biden administration launched a last-minute push Wednesday to derail the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to spend billions of dollars on a new fleet of gasoline-powered delivery trucks, citing the damage the polluting vehicles could inflict on the climate and Americans’ health.
The dispute over the Postal Service’s plans to spend up to $11.3 billion on as many as 165,000 new delivery trucks over the next decade has major implications for President Biden’s goal of converting all federal cars and trucks to clean power. Postal Service vehicles make up a third of the government’s fleet, and the EPA warned the agency last fall that its environmental analysis of the contract rested on flawed assumptions and missing data.
The EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality sent letters to the Postal Service on Wednesday that urge it to reconsider plans to buy mostly gas-powered vehicles and conduct a new, more thorough technical analysis. The EPA also asked the Postal Service to hold a public hearing on its fleet modernization plans, a request the agency had rejected when California regulators made it Jan. 28.
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“The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world,” wrote Vicki Arroyo, the EPA’s associate administrator for policy.
Read the letter: EPA says USPS truck contract is 'seriously deficient' in acknowledging climate concerns
Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., and even rising sales of electrical vehicles have yet to make a dent. Electric vehicle proponents had hoped the Postal Service purchase would provide a boost for the industry.
While policymakers agree that the Postal Service’s aging and unsafe fleet is due for an upgrade, the question of how to do it has fueled a fight between Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Donald Trump donor and holdover from the last administration, and Biden officials, as well as environmental groups, state regulators and the United Auto Workers union.
Biden’s spending package would give USPS $6 billion to replace dangerous mail trucks with electric vehicles
DeJoy, who oversaw the agency’s decision to award the truck contract to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense, signed off on a plan calling for only 10 percent of the new trucks to be electric and offering only a 0.4 mile-per-gallon fuel economy improvement over the agency’s current fleet, which is nearly 30 years old. When asked why the Postal Service wasn’t buying more electric vehicles, he said it couldn’t afford them.
Over the past week, environmentalists and California’s top air quality regulator have called on the EPA to block the Postal Service from moving forward with what they described as a poorly thought-out purchase that would harm communities across the country. They asked the EPA to refer the dispute to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which mediates disagreements between federal agencies over actions affecting the environment and public health.
EPA officials declined to invoke this rarely used power. Instead, senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they decided to send the warning letters to the Postal Service to give its leadership a chance to voluntarily change course.
They acknowledged that DeJoy might reject their requests, as he has rebuffed previous calls for the agency to rethink its plans. But they said that even if the postmaster general charged ahead with an order for mostly gas-powered vehicles in 2023, the contract’s first year, there is still time for the agency to pivot to electric trucks in later years if more funding became available or the leadership’s perspective changes.
It’s also likely that if the mail agency — which enjoys independent status from the executive branch — disregards the Biden officials’ objections and orders the new delivery trucks, environmental groups would sue. Adrian Martinez, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the groups would have a strong case.
“It is hard to predict what courts will do, but the Postal Service’s work here is just so embarrassingly flimsy,” Martinez said. “They don’t reveal the source of the information for many of their conclusions, instead dismissing electrification outright.”
The objections took senior postal leaders by surprise. The Postal Service’s governing board was largely unaware of tension around the environmental impacts of the trucks, according to three people involved with the contract, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The House plans to vote in the coming days on legislation relieving the Postal Service of much of its debt, and the individuals said postal officials privately worry that an ugly spat over its environmental record could spur congressional Democrats to delay the vote.
The Biden administration launched a last-minute push Wednesday to derail the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to spend billions of dollars on a new fleet of gasoline-powered delivery trucks, citing the damage the polluting vehicles could inflict on the climate and Americans’ health.
The dispute over the Postal Service’s plans to spend up to $11.3 billion on as many as 165,000 new delivery trucks over the next decade has major implications for President Biden’s goal of converting all federal cars and trucks to clean power. Postal Service vehicles make up a third of the government’s fleet, and the EPA warned the agency last fall that its environmental analysis of the contract rested on flawed assumptions and missing data.
The EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality sent letters to the Postal Service on Wednesday that urge it to reconsider plans to buy mostly gas-powered vehicles and conduct a new, more thorough technical analysis. The EPA also asked the Postal Service to hold a public hearing on its fleet modernization plans, a request the agency had rejected when California regulators made it Jan. 28.
ADVERTISING
“The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world,” wrote Vicki Arroyo, the EPA’s associate administrator for policy.
Read the letter: EPA says USPS truck contract is 'seriously deficient' in acknowledging climate concerns
Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., and even rising sales of electrical vehicles have yet to make a dent. Electric vehicle proponents had hoped the Postal Service purchase would provide a boost for the industry.
While policymakers agree that the Postal Service’s aging and unsafe fleet is due for an upgrade, the question of how to do it has fueled a fight between Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Donald Trump donor and holdover from the last administration, and Biden officials, as well as environmental groups, state regulators and the United Auto Workers union.
Biden’s spending package would give USPS $6 billion to replace dangerous mail trucks with electric vehicles
DeJoy, who oversaw the agency’s decision to award the truck contract to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense, signed off on a plan calling for only 10 percent of the new trucks to be electric and offering only a 0.4 mile-per-gallon fuel economy improvement over the agency’s current fleet, which is nearly 30 years old. When asked why the Postal Service wasn’t buying more electric vehicles, he said it couldn’t afford them.
Over the past week, environmentalists and California’s top air quality regulator have called on the EPA to block the Postal Service from moving forward with what they described as a poorly thought-out purchase that would harm communities across the country. They asked the EPA to refer the dispute to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which mediates disagreements between federal agencies over actions affecting the environment and public health.
EPA officials declined to invoke this rarely used power. Instead, senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said they decided to send the warning letters to the Postal Service to give its leadership a chance to voluntarily change course.
They acknowledged that DeJoy might reject their requests, as he has rebuffed previous calls for the agency to rethink its plans. But they said that even if the postmaster general charged ahead with an order for mostly gas-powered vehicles in 2023, the contract’s first year, there is still time for the agency to pivot to electric trucks in later years if more funding became available or the leadership’s perspective changes.
It’s also likely that if the mail agency — which enjoys independent status from the executive branch — disregards the Biden officials’ objections and orders the new delivery trucks, environmental groups would sue. Adrian Martinez, an attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the groups would have a strong case.
“It is hard to predict what courts will do, but the Postal Service’s work here is just so embarrassingly flimsy,” Martinez said. “They don’t reveal the source of the information for many of their conclusions, instead dismissing electrification outright.”
The objections took senior postal leaders by surprise. The Postal Service’s governing board was largely unaware of tension around the environmental impacts of the trucks, according to three people involved with the contract, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The House plans to vote in the coming days on legislation relieving the Postal Service of much of its debt, and the individuals said postal officials privately worry that an ugly spat over its environmental record could spur congressional Democrats to delay the vote.