Gray: The Valley isn’t DC’s punching bag

By Rep. Adam Gray
Reprinted from The Merced Sun-Star

In Merced, one situation perfectly illustrates the problems created when political promises collide with cold, hard reality. 

The Central Valley is where America’s food grows. Our agricultural communities, working families and small businesses depend on being able to move goods to market efficiently. We need stable roads and transportation infrastructure to make that happen, but right now, we are being held hostage by an administration that tried to cut red tape and instead tied itself into knots. 

Enter the Atwater-Merced Expressway, which will be an economic lifeline for commuters, farmers and freight traffic once complete. This vital transportation project will provide direct access between Highway 99 and two of our region’s most important economic engines: UC Merced and Castle Commerce Center.

UC Merced is rapidly expanding as the newest UC campus, with an emphasis on training the next generation in high paying science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields that are crucial to our region’s economic future. 

The Castle Commerce Center, meanwhile, has grown into a multimodal freight hub with air, rail and ground connections. It’s part of a Foreign-Trade Zone, holds a partnership with the Port of Los Angeles and operates a BNSF rail spur.

Right now, commuters, students and freight traffic are forced to navigate congested local streets in Atwater and Merced to reach these destinations. But the Atwater-Merced Expressway would change that, providing direct highway access that will spur economic development across both cities. Planning and approvals have been underway for years. Now, however, federal action that was supposed to help has made things worse. 

When he rolled back California’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waiver, President Donald Trump promised less bureaucratic red tape, faster project approvals and an end to the state’s job-killing environmental regulations. 

Instead, staff at the U.S. EPA have been directed not to move forward with certain California transportation projects because they do not have an approved model on which to verify projects. What does that mean for California residents? The EPA doesn’t know if they should give a project an A or an F, so they just aren’t issuing report cards at all. 

The very people who were supposed to have an easier time getting to “yes” from this streamlined process are now sitting in limbo trying to figure out how they’re supposed to do their jobs. 

Representatives for Merced County have told us that EPA staff have been “good to work with,” but they need “guidance and approval to continue working on this project.” For once, the bureaucrats at the EPA really do want to help, but Washington has left them without a roadmap.

This is what happens when you govern by social media post. This is what happens when you make promises without understanding how the machinery of government actually works. 

These delays are costing us dearly: The Atwater-Merced Expressway has been pushed back at least 18 to 24 months. That’s two years of continued traffic congestion, of delayed economic development and of a community that did everything right by securing local funding, completing environmental studies, following every rule and then being told to wait because Washington can’t — or won’t — get its act together. 

To add insult to injury, there’s now the added uncertainty of potential tariffs affecting construction material costs. So even if the environmental clearance comes through, the projects might be more expensive than budgeted. The promise of a more efficient government is now chaos masquerading as leadership. 

California communities are now paying “the Hypocrisy Tax” — penalized not for failing to follow the rules, but because the rules themselves have become incomprehensible. 

We need a federal government that provides clear guidance to its own agencies and stops treating California like a political punching bag. The Valley didn’t ask to be caught in the middle of a fight between Washington and Sacramento. But that’s where we are, and we’re paying the price in delayed projects, increased costs and continued safety risks.

Rep. Adam Gray represents California’s 13th Congressional District and serves on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries.