DON'T JEOPARDIZE HIGHWAY FUNDS FOR STATE

The Sierra Club, joined by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, has filed a lawsuit in federal court in St. Louis that threatens Missouri's federal highway funding. The environmental organizations are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in another episode of a familiar pattern: The EPA all but solicits a friendly lawsuit in which it is the nominal defendant -- the party being sued. When the court rules against the EPA, the resultant order substantially increases the agency's power and reach. The environmental groups want the EPA to hold up federal highway funding because of air pollution problems in the St. Louis region.

Missouri U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond has taken the lead in opposing the lawsuit and is trying to awaken Missourians to the threat posed by it. Bond warns that the lawsuit could jeopardize $600 million a year in federal highway funding. He says he has a message for the San Francisco-based Sierra Club: "Get out of our business" and let Missouri proceed with efforts to improve the state's highways.

Bond is leading a petition drive to sign up as many as 10,000 Missourians calling on the environmental groups to drop their lawsuit. Included in those supporting the petition drive are the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, the Missouri Farm Bureau, the Missouri Highway Corridor Coalition and the Missouri Transportation Development Council. Supporting the efforts of these groups are the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau and state lawmakers, along with city and county officials. All are helping circulate the petitions. Emerson is backing a House bill, patterned after Bond's Senate bill, which wouldn't allow highway funding to be yanked from states for Clean Air Act violations.

We support Bond, Emerson, the petition drive and the legislation for which they are seeking passage. These environmental groups should ring down the curtain on this particular episode of environmental extremism.