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These bad boys are on the road since 1987. They average one gallon of gas per 8.2 miles.Mark Hertzberg/Zuma
The saga of the United States Postal Service’s Planned gas-guzzling fleet continues.
Sixteen states and two environmental activist groups—Earthjustice and the National Resources Defense Council—Are you suing USPSto halt the purchase of a fleet o gas-guzzling postal trucks. Recent criticisms have been levelled at Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General, for his decision not to sign a contract. 165,000 new postal trucks—90 percent of which would run on gas and earn 8.6 miles per gallon.
In Their suitabilityThe environmental groups point out that DeJoy didn’t begin an environmental review until after the Postal Service had already made a $483 million payment to Oshkosh Defence, the manufacturer of new trucks. The Environmental Protection Agency argued that the review was flawed.
“Electrifying the Postal Service fleet would reduce smog and particulate matter pollution in nearly every neighborhood in America,” the plaintiffs write. “Postal delivery routes are stop-and-go by nature, which means that gas-powered delivery vehicles idle just outside people’s homes for much of the day. This daily pollution impacts nearly every single resident in the country, but the harmful effects of this pollution are felt most significantly by low-income communities of color, which are often forced to breathe compounding sources of pollution.”
Sixteen state attorneys general filed a separate suit arguing that the USPS’s plan would hinder their own environmental goals. “The Postal Service has a historic opportunity to invest in our planet and in our future,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading the states’ suit, said in a statement. “Instead, it is doubling down on outdated technologies that are bad for our environment and bad for our communities.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D.Va.) was elected to Congress in March Introduced a bill that would require the USPS to commit to a new fleet of 75 percent electric vehicles, but the proposal hasn’t moved out of committee.
“Once this purchase goes through, we’ll be stuck with more than 100,000 new gas-guzzling vehicles on neighborhood streets, serving homes across our state and across the country, for the next 30 years,” Bonta said. “We’re going to court to make sure the Postal Service complies with the law and considers more environmentally friendly alternatives before it makes this decision.”
