On Friday, the U.S. Eastern District Court upheld claims in a lawsuit filed by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin and cut off federal funding for the Highway 23 road expansion project between Fond du Lac and Plymouth. The Court agreed with the land use organization that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation used unsupported, inflated traffic forecasts to justify the project. Executive Director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin Steve Hiniker says the ruling is a huge win for taxpayers. According to the ruling, the Wisconsin DOT failed to justify the amount of traffic it projected as likely to use the road in the future. The Court ruled that the project is ineligible for federal funding until documented accurate traffic forecasts can be made that justify expanding the highway. The ruling does not stop the state from building the project using only state funds. Hiniker says the state can make safety improvements along the highway without expanding it to four lanes. The Court also agreed that the Department’s environmental impact statement violated federal law by failing to consider whether updated population projections that showed that the population in the area of Highway 23 would grow only about one-third as quickly as the Department had previously projected would affect the asserted need for expanding the highway.
