MONROE COUNTY, Pa. – “Not through my backyard,” a Pennsylvania lawmakers’ message to PennDOT over a billion-dollar highway expansion project.<\/p>\n
State Rep. Tarah Probst says if the massive I-80 project isn’t scaled down, she will tie it up in court.<\/p>\n
Close to her Stroudsburg office is the Pocono Creek, we saw and heard a Bald Eagle cry.<\/p>\n
A legislative call to arms for the Monroe County State Rep.<\/p>\n
“If I have to go to Congress, I will,” Probst said.<\/p>\n
In October, amateur archaeologist Danny Younger showed us his discovery of long-lost Fort Hamilton, commissioned by Benjamin Franklin during the French and Indian War, as well as a massive Eagles nest.<\/p>\n
Both border Pocono Creek and are in the path of PennDOT’s one billion dollar I-80 expansion.<\/p>\n
“I’m not a state rep on this, I’m a constituent, I’m a person that lives and is going to be affected by this,” Probst said.<\/p>\n
At the center of the fight is the issuance of a “Finding Of No Significant Impact” document, which allows issuances of permits on this project.<\/p>\n
Probst says it’s a lie and a dereliction of duty, given the recent discovery of 7,000-year-old Native American artifacts, wetlands, Revolutionary War fort and the Bald Eagle nests, which appears to sit within the 660-foot federally required buffer zone around active bald eagle nests in construction zones.<\/p>\n
Probst’s concern extends to the potential closing of a highway exit, separating it from Main Street that will increase emergency response times.<\/p>\n
Probst has 2500 signatures wanting the project scaled back and says PennDOT doesn’t care.<\/p>\n
“More powerful than our Governor, and they do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, however they want, and they don’t care,” she said of PennDOT.<\/p>\n
In response, PennDOT said \u201cThe Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is in compliance with all federal and state laws, rules, and regulations for the I-80 Reconstruction Project. PennDOT will continue to maintain compliance with all federal and state laws, rules, and regulations during all stages of the I-80 Reconstruction Project.\u201d<\/p>\n
A project permit has yet to be issued in Stroudsburg. If it is, Probst says she’ll self-fund a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
“I’m here to do a job that I was elected to do, and the last thing I’m going to do is roll over to PennDOT,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONROE COUNTY, Pa. – “Not through my backyard,” a Pennsylvania lawmakers’ message to PennDOT over a billion-dollar highway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,1704],"class_list":["post-193755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}