Audubon California has recently endorsed the Traffic Congestion Relief & Safe School Bus Act, or Proposition 51, which will appear on the California statewide ballot on November 5, 2002. Proposition 51 would allocate 30% of the state share of the sales tax on new and used motor vehicles to a new trust fund for transportation improvements around the state, a fund that would generate approximately $910 million a year. Proposition 51 will include a significant, permanent, annual investment for programs that mitigate the impact that transportation systems have on our air, water, and land resources. In this way it will help enhance water quality, protect wetlands, provide habitat and open space protection, improve air quality, and safeguard river parkways.

Proposition 51 further promotes habitat, open space and environmental protection by doubling the existing Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program (EEMP), originally created by the Legislature at the level of $10 million dollars, to reduce the devastating impact that transportation development has on natural lands, parkland and wildlife habitat. Additionally, Proposition 51 creates the Transportation Impacts Mitigation Trust Fund of more than $90 million a year, which may be used for the acquisition or enhancement of resource lands, wildlife corridors and habitat linkages; projects to protect wildlife; projects to protect open-space lands from transportation development; and many others.

Proposition 51 provides more than $18 million a year specifically to reduce the impacts of transportation development on water quality, funding projects such as the acquisition and restoration of riparian buffers, wetlands and watershed lands, since these habitat areas are especially effective at filtering and eliminating pollutants. Proposition 51 also recognizes the environmental damage that transportation development (specifically of bridges and roads) has on rivers, their watersheds, and patterns of flow. As such, Proposition 51 funds may be used for the restoration of individual rivers, as well as bike and hiking paths along rivers to provide alternative means of transportation.

Proposition 51 also includes other environmentally-oriented transportation programs, including expanded public transit service, safe bicycle and pedestrian facilities and clean-fuel school buses, thereby reducing traffic congestion, enhancing air quality, and promoting transportation-related safety.

Proposition 51 has been endorsed by over 200 organizations in addition to Audubon, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Planning and Conservation League, Trust for Public Land, California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG), Sierra Club California, Endangered Habitats League, National Wildlife Federation, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Lung Association of California, and a cross-section of transportation, business, labor, health, education, and children’s safety advocacy organizations.

Please vote YES on Proposition 51 when it appears on the ballot this November!