Stimulus Ideals in Conflict on the Texas Prairie

Over the years the Katy Prairie has survived the cattle ranchers who tamed its fields, the rice farmers who cleared its wildflowers and tall grasses, and even the encroachment of Houston, some 30 miles to the east, whose spiraling outward growth turned most of the formerly lonesome prairie into subdivisions and strip malls. Now the prairie is facing a new threat: the federal stimulus law. Texas plans to spend $181 million of its federal stimulus money on building a 15-mile, four-lane toll road — from Interstate 10 to Highway 290 and right through the prairie — that will eventually form part of an outer beltway around greater Houston called the Grand Parkway. The road exemplifies an unintended effect of the stimulus law: an administration that opposes suburban sprawl is giving money to states for projects that are almost certain to exacerbate it. North Carolina is extending Interstate 295 outside Fayetteville, which will benefit Fort Bragg but use up limited resources that were being sought by bigger areas like Charlotte and Raleigh. New Hampshire plans to widen Interstate 93, which gets clogged because so many residents of southern New Hampshire now commute to Boston for work. Lawmakers in Washington decided to widen several highways around the state, but snubbed projects sought by Seattle. The plan to build a new leg of the Grand Parkway near here highlights the tension between some of the competing priorities of the Obama administration. The administration’s desire to change the way the country thinks about development, and to wean it from its dependency on foreign oil, is clashing with its need to spend stimulus money as fast as possible...NY Times