Texas is skirting federal environmental law to push for highway expansion

The state department of transportation says many of its highway projects have “no significant impact.”

After college, Michael Moritz got a job in Houston analyzing fatal car crashes. Moritz, a 27-year-old native of San Antonio, stood on Interstate 45, one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the country, and documented how cars collided. One day in the fall of 2019, he learned that the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, intended to expand I-45, supposedly to fix congestion and make the highway safer. “More lanes just doesn’t equal safety,” he said. And then he learned about all the other negative impacts of the $7 billion expansion project, which would remake Houston’s downtown and demolish more than 1,000 homes, nearly 350 businesses, five churches, and two schools. 

He got involved with a grassroots group called Stop TxDOT I-45and started spending nights and weekends fighting the expansion. Gradually, he met people fighting freeway expansions across the state, including in the capital city of Austin, and joined a regular Zoom call to discuss strategy. He signed up for automated emails from TxDOT to find out when new projects were proposed and approved.