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BAYONNE — Support for raising the Bayonne Bridge roadway is so broad it takes in political rivals as bitter as U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Republican Gov. Chris Christie.

The backing also extends from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Albany office to Washington, D.C., where the Obama administration approved the project for a fast-track permitting process last week.

But officials say environmental considerations have already slowed the project by months, and a coalition of community and environmental groups is now threatening halt it with legal action if its concerns are not addressed.

"We will not hesitate to sue," said Amy Goldsmith, state director of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, a member of the Coalition for Healthy Ports.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Bayonne Bridge, is seeking to raise the roadway's height above the Kill Van Kull by an additional 65 feet, at a cost to shippers, toll payers and other port authority revenue sources totaling at least $1 billion. The project is intended to protect the port's 279,000 jobs and keep billions of dollars in economic activity and tax revenue from drying up or moving to competing ports.

That would happen, proponents say, if low-hanging roadway prevents the world’s largest container ships from getting to terminals in Newark, Elizabeth and Staten Island once they begin traveling directly from Asia to the East Coast following the opening of an expanded Panama Canal.

But the healthy ports coalition believes the increased volume expected to result from bigger ships passing under the raised roadway will worsen pollution in some disadvantaged neighborhoods in Essex and Union counties. Those neighborhoods are traversed by trucks carrying containers between the shipping terminals and distribution centers to the north, south and west.

The coalition has teamed up with a prominent environmental law firm to monitor the fast-tracked permitting process and see if a substantive or procedural violation occurs, and if so, to take legal action to halt the project and force the Port Authority to address the coalition’s concerns. Among other things, the coalition wants the Port Authority to devise a truck-replacement program that doesn’t lay the financial burden overwhelmingly on the backs of financially struggling independent truckers.

The coalition includes the Newark-based Ironbound Community Corporation, the Alliance for a Greater New York and the Teamsters, which has been waging a campaign to organize independent port truckers. The coalition’s new partner on legal issues is the Newark-based Eastern Environmental Law Center.

"The fear is that in trying to accommodate the construction schedule that the applicant has, that certain environmental impacts associated with the project would be overlooked," said B.J. Schulte, a lawyer with the law center, which specializes in issues that involve the impact of pollution on poor and disadvantaged communities.

"The biggest thing we’re going to be looking at is what is the scope of the environmental analysis that they’ve done," he said. "If they limit it to the construction-related emissions and construction-related impacts, I think we’re not going to be satisfied with it."

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The roadway raising requires a permit from the Coast Guard, which has been conducting an assessment of the project since January to determine its effect on the air, water quality and other areas.

Schulte said the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires an analysis of a project’s net environmental impact, which would include emissions increases resulting from higher cargo volumes.

Even without a legal challenge so far, the review process has been slowed by environmental concerns.

Gary Kassof, the Coast Guard’s District 1 bridge program manager, said the agency originally wanted to issue an environmental assessment this month but will now hold off while it gathers and analyzes additional information. He said the Coast Guard has asked for information from the Port Authority, which owns the bridge and is the permit applicant for roadway project.

"We have pushed the schedule out because we really need to address these issues," Kassof said. "It’s just a matter of months at this point, not one month, but months."

Coalition members also joined the state Sierra Club's director, Jeff Tittel, in expressing concern that fast-tracking would result in a "shoddy" environmental review, leading to environmental and even economic costs down the road.

But Kassof rejected those assertions, pointing to the current delay in the release of the environmental assessment as evidence of the commitment by the Coast Guard, and its partners at the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Highway Administration, to meet the responsibility to address environmental concerns.

"We take that responsibility very seriously," he said.

The Port Authority addressed the coalition's concerns in a statement saying it would "zealously fight" to protect both port jobs and the environment.

"Our 'Raise the Roadway' project and our Clean Trucks Program strike the right balance in protecting jobs and continuing our extensive, ongoing efforts to be good environmental stewards," the statement said.

In response to the coalition's concerns, the White House said the fast-track program is intended not only to speed the review process, but also to minimize environmental impacts, by enhancing coordination among federal permitting agencies while preserving environmental standards and protocols. Language in the order itself states that it is intended, "to significantly reduce the aggregate time required to make decisions in the permitting and review of infrastructure projects by the Federal Government, while improving environmental and community outcomes."

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