Press Releases
04/28/2022
Attorney General Tong Sues Postal Service for Flawed Environmental Review Used to Justify Purchase of Massive Fossil Fuel-Powered Vehicle Fleet
(Hartford, CT) -- Attorney General William Tong today joined 16 other attorneys general, the City of New York, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in suing the U.S. Postal Service and challenging its deeply flawed environmental analysis for its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Acquisition program. The Postal Service has the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, consisting of over 212,000 vehicles, many of which are near the end of their useful lives. Today’s lawsuit alleges that the Postal Service's plans to replace 90 percent of this fleet with fossil fuel-powered, internal combustion engine vehicles fails to comply with even the National Environmental Policy Act's most basic requirements and should be vacated.“This massive vehicle purchase by the U.S. Postal Service is a generational opportunity to transition to modern, zero-emissions electric vehicles for the better of our country. The Postal Service has the single largest civilian vehicle fleet of anywhere in the world, with vehicles on the road six days a week in every community nationwide. Shifting this fleet away from fossil-fuel powered engines to zero-emission electric vehicles would have an immediate positive impact on local air quality and our state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Postal Service ignored their clear legal obligations to consider these environmental impacts, and this ill-conceived purchase should not proceed,” said Attorney General Tong.
Postal Service vehicles are on the road six days a week in every community in the United States. While these vehicles play a critical role in delivering the nation’s mail, they also emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases and other hazardous air pollutants. Many Postal Service facilities are located within environmental justice communities that are already overburdened by pollution. As most of the Postal Service's vehicles near the end of their useful lives, the Postal Service has the opportunity to convert its fleet to zero-emission electric vehicles, a change that would reduce pollution in these overburdened communities and help tackle the climate crisis.
Given the transformational nature of this change and its significant environmental and public health implications, the Postal Service was obligated to take a “hard look” at the impacts of its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Acquisitions program under the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead, the Postal Service chose a manufacturer, signed a contract, and put down a substantial down payment for new vehicles, before even publishing a cursory environmental review. This environmental review, which was later finalized, failed to consider and evaluate vehicle fleets with a larger mix of electric vehicles, instead opting to replace up to 165,000 of its delivery vehicles with ninety percent fossil fuel-powered vehicles over the next ten years.
In the lawsuit, the coalition argues that the Postal Service's Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) violated the National Environmental Policy Act and should be set aside because:
• The Postal Service violated well-established legal precedent by signing contracts with a defense contractor to procure the vehicles before releasing its draft environmental review;
• The Postal Service failed to consider reasonable alternatives to its proposed action and arbitrarily rejected any consideration of vehicle fleets with a greater percentage of electric vehicles;
• The Postal Service's environmental review failed to properly consider air quality, environmental justice, and climate impacts of purchasing a primarily fossil fuel-powered fleet;
• The Final EIS failed to ensure the scientific integrity of its analysis by relying on unfounded assumptions and failing to provide the source of the data it considered; and
• The Final EIS is inconsistent with state policies to reduce fossil fuel consumption and to encourage the development and use of clean vehicles.
Attorney General Tong joins the attorneys general of California, New York, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the City of New York and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, in filing the lawsuit.
A copy of the petition can be found here.
Assistant Attorney General William E. Dornbos and Chief of the Environment Section Matthew Levine assisted the Attorney General with this matter.
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