Why are we looking at a Westpark alignment when it was previously opposed?
Multiple conceptual alignments are under consideration. Federal regulations require that an environmental document “rigorously explore and objectively evaluate all reasonable alternatives” and to “devote substantial treatment to each alternative considered in detail … so that reviewers may evaluate their comparative merits”. The regulations also provide that “for alternatives which were eliminated from detailed study, the environmental document should briefly discuss the reasons for their having been eliminated.” Opposition to an alternative is an important consideration, but cannot be the sole basis for not studying an alternative, and this alternative has never been carried beyond the conceptual level. Federal and State environmental laws require evaluation of reasonable alternatives, of which the Westpark alternative is one.
