16 States Sue the US Postal Service Over Its Plan to Replace Its Fleet With Gas-Powered Vehicles
Sixteen states on Thursday sued the U.S. Postal Service over its plan to replace its aging delivery fleet with thousands of gas-powered delivery vehicles over the next decade, alleging that the agency hasn’t adequately accounted for the environmental harm of the vehicles. They were joined by the District of Columbia, the City of New York and a Bay Area organization. Environmental and labor groups filed separate suits.
The lawsuits argue that the agency’s environmental analysis to justify spending up to $11.3 billion on the gas trucks, which only get 8.6 miles per gallon, was deeply flawed.
The Postal Service has about 230,000 vehicles, making up about one-third of the country’s entire federal fleet. Its plan to buy gas trucks would blunt President Joe Biden’s pledge to replace the federal fleet of 600,000 cars and trucks to electric power and cut the government’s carbon emissions by 65% by 2030. The administration has pledged to slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by the end of the decade and transition the economy to net-zero emissions by 2050.
