Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and his New York counterpart Letitia James are part of a multistate coalition suing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to stop it plans to replace most of its aging vehicular fleet with fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
The USPS”™ fleet consists of more than 212,000 vehicles. According to the lawsuit filed by 16 state attorneys general, the City of New York and California”™s Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the USPS was mandated by law to conduct an environmental review ahead of its fleet replacement, but instead chose a manufacturer, signed a contract, and put down a substantial down payment for new vehicles before publishing an environmental review that the lawsuit declared to be flawed.
The USPS is planning to replace up to 165,000 of its delivery vehicles with 90% fossil fuel-powered vehicles over the next 10 years.
“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,” said Tong. “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.”
“Louis DeJoy”™s choice to ignore the law and buy an almost entirely gas-fueled fleet of 165,000 vehicles is fiscally and environmentally irresponsible,” said James, referring to the Postmaster General appointed by President Trump in 2020. “This decision will have lasting and devastating consequences for our environment, and the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers. I stand with my colleagues across the country in opposing USPS”™s fatally flawed decision-making, and we will fight to ensure our laws are followed and our communities are protected.”
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
