State sues Postal Service for buying gas vehicles

OLYMPIA — The U.S. Postal Service and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy were sued by the state of Washington, 15 other states, the District of Columbia and New York City for not buying electric vehicles while replacing 165,000 vehicles. State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filled a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California April 28, asserting violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The lawsuit insists the review process was deficient with a late environmental review that “did not consider reasonable alternatives,” a press release from the attorney general states. The Postal Service is accused of ignoring key environmental impacts, like the effect of continued poor air quality in already-polluted communities. It did not consider whether purchasing a majority of gas-powered vehicles was consistent with climate policies in states like Washington, the lawsuit alleges.

Ferguson asserts that USPS ignored or discounted the environmental impacts – including air quality in communities already burdened by pollution, environmental justice and other climate harms – by simply assuming that any upgrade to its vehicle fleet would be positive. Ferguson contends such an arbitrary metric is not the standard for review under NEPA, which requires federal agencies to take a hard look at environmental impacts of any decisions and not to commit resources to a course of action before completing an environmental review.

The release notes USPS has one of the largest civilian vehicle fleets in the world, consisting of approximately 212,000 vehicles that are on the road delivering mail at least six days per week to nearly every community in the U.S. Most of these vehicles were manufactured between 1986 and 1994 and are now beyond their intended service life. As a result, they are increasingly expensive to operate and maintain.

The Associated Press reported that 20% of vehicles were electric-powered in the initial $2.98 billion order for about 50,000 vehicles.