By james art This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, an independent, nonprofit news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
BIRMINGHAM — Driving north on Alabama Highway 79 in late October offers stunning views of the rolling Appalachian foothills. Splashes of yellow, orange, and red appeared among the green, tree-covered hills as fall arrived outside Alabama’s largest urban area.
The road narrows to two lanes about 15 miles outside of downtown Birmingham, but that stretch could be almost anywhere in rural Alabama. Mailboxes along the highway indicate residences hidden among the trees. The only non-residential properties are Agape Church, Leeroy’s Dynamite Fireworks Store, and Pinson Truck Equipment Company, a trailer repair business.
But this quiet, rural countryside may not remain rural or quiet for long.
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Someday it will become part of the Birmingham North Beltline, a $5 billion project to build a 52-mile stretch of interstate north of the city and complete a full circle.
“It’s sad to watch this highway leave a huge scar and a big hole in a beautiful mountain,” said Sarah Stokes, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “And it’s a one-mile segment. So that’s what they’re going to do for 52 miles is go through the mountains and put in this big concrete eyesore.
For decades, elected officials and business groups have touted the Northern Beltline as a way to spur development in sparsely populated areas north of the city. In the early 1960s, Birmingham experienced a mass emigration of white people from the city to the sprawling suburbs to the south, which led to the construction of Interstate 459, a semicircular ring road around the southern edge of the city that passes through densely populated suburbs such as Hoover and Vestavia Hills.
Since I-459 was completed, talk turned to the northern beltway, called I-422, which would complete the loop. Many state officials have said the completed freeway will lead to the same kind of growth north of the city that has already occurred in the south.
“In the movie ‘Field of Dreams,’ they said, ‘Build it and they will come,'” U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer said at a media event last year, misquoting the 1989 Kevin Costner film. “It’s about infrastructure.”
Palmer, whose district includes the Birmingham suburbs rather than the city itself, called the project “critical” and said Alabama’s congressional delegation is “committed” to seeing it completed.
But a growing school of thought says freeway building isn’t the best way to spur development, and four decades of analysis of roads equaling growth is outdated.
In a news release, Stokes called the project a “literal and figurative road to nowhere.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center commissioned a report by economists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that looked at the economic analysis that the project would spur massive growth.
The report is a scathing rebuke of Alabama’s economic rationale for the project.
“People mistakenly think that if you build this ring road in this northern region, which is currently not densely populated, that somehow it will stimulate development and growth in that area,” said Matthew Metzgar, lead author of the report. to Inside Climate News.
Metzgar said Alabama is in reverse. First you need growth, he said, then you build the infrastructure to support that growth.
“They think if they build it, people will come,” Metzgar said. “It’s just not really true.”
The central cog in the economic argument for the road project is a 2010 study by the University of Alabama’s Center for Business and Economic Research that projected significant economic growth after the road’s completion.
Metzgar’s 2024 report said the analysis “radically overestimated” the number of jobs the project would create, and that the state highway department has not updated its economic analysis since that 2010 report, despite a separate study in 2012 found flaws in Alabama’s analysis.
Metzgar said that because the Birmingham metropolitan area isn’t growing much in population right now, the project would likely only attract people from the southern suburbs to move north of the city. It does not create growth; just move it.
“Nothing really warrants putting this massive 52-mile road, again in a mostly rural area, that there just isn’t a demand for it,” Metzgar said.
The estimated total cost of the project was pegged at $5.4 billion in 2013 by the Federal Highway Administration, but even those numbers may be out of date.
Metzgar and colleagues said the total cost of the project could result in mostly temporary construction jobs at a cost of $500,000 or more per temporary job.
“The current reassessment of the Beltline project continues to use outdated and inaccurate numbers,” Metzgar’s report said. “As such, the benefits of this project have been drastically overstated while the costs have not been fully accounted for.”
Alabama officials are not stopping in their pursuit of the beltline project.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said last year that “the need for the project has grown” and that the release of new federal funding was “an exciting day for Jefferson County,” where the project is located.
The Jefferson County Commission passed a unanimous resolution in support of the project in September, and the mayors of cities along the route were enthusiastic supporters of the project.
Officials with the Alabama Department of Transportation did not respond to Inside Climate News’ questions about Metzgar’s report. The state’s latest reassessment of the project — an 832-page document released this year — relied on the 2010 Economic Growth Survey for its projections.
Decades of delay
The idea of creating a belt around Birmingham has been discussed since the 1960s, with some progress being made in the last decade.
The first environmental impact statements for the project date back to 1995. Since then, it would be almost 20 years before the first shovel hit the dirt in 2014, when the state broke ground on the first 2.86 miles of the beltway.
Construction was halted in 2016 when federal funding ran out, with only grading and engineering work completed on a section of highway in the middle of the proposed route, from Alabama Highways 79 to 75. Construction resumed this year on this segment, which is expected to be completed in 2026.
Gov. Ivey announced last year that the state had secured $489 million in federal funds to build the next stretch of road, a 10-mile stretch from the end of the current road west to U.S. Highway 31, near Gardendale.
The Alabama Department of Transportation said it began contacting property owners and conducting surveys along that portion of the route in July.
The bulk of that funding, $369 million, comes from the Infrastructure Act of 2021. Palmer has drawn criticism for publicizing his efforts to secure funding for the line while voting against the bill providing it.
Initial estimates put the project to be completed by 2050 at a total cost of $1.9 billion. Both figures seem unlikely. A final environmental impact statement for the 2024 project states that the acquisition process and construction activities on the western half of the ring road are “not planned for the next twenty years”, meaning it will be after 2044. , before even considering construction on the western half of the loop.
The project will pollute Alabama’s beloved wilderness areas
About 1.5 miles south of where Beltway construction began a decade ago is Turkey Creek Nature Preserve, one of the Birmingham area’s most beloved natural recreation areas.
During the hot summer months, extending roughly from March to October, dozens, if not hundreds, of cars will park along the narrow two-lane road through the tree-covered forest to get out and swim in the cool, shallow waters of a spring creek and drift along rocky shoals.
In addition to its recreational value, Turkey Creek is home to five endangered species of fish, including the red arrow, which is found nowhere else in the world. The Turkey Creek watershed is also home to two species of protected bats, one endangered turtle, and one endangered flower species.
And that’s just one tributary that will be affected by construction.
Opponents of the project say the chosen route crosses miles of pristine forest land, foothills and critical rivers and streams that provide all the region’s drinking water.
“The entire belt line is 52 miles and it goes through some of the most scenic, beautiful mountains in Alabama,” said Stokes of the Southern Environmental Law Center. “It will destroy over 3,000 football fields of forest and cross and permanently alter the Black Warrior and Cahaba River tributaries in 90 different locations.”
Most of the city of Birmingham and surrounding areas receive their drinking water from treatment plants on these two rivers.
“This is a very destructive environmental project that has little or no utility,” Stokes said. “There will be little impact on traffic. This will have little impact on economic growth. So it is such a shame that we are putting so much money into this project and will cause so much destruction to our Earth for little or no gain.
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