Case Study:

Waterloo, Iowa

Context

The goal of authors David Forkenbrock and Lisa Schweitzer was to develop an approach to estimating a variety of impacts relevant to environmental justice. After consulting with the Iowa and Minnesota Departments of Transportation, they chose to test their approach in Waterloo, Iowa. Waterloo is a city in northeastern Iowa with a 1990 population of about 66,000. It is relatively diverse (13.2 percent minority population) and has a relatively low-median income compared to typical metropolitan areas in Iowa and Minnesota.

Running north-south through the center of Waterloo is U.S. Highway 63 (Figure 1). North of the city center, the route runs through racially mixed and low-income neighborhoods. The authors modeled air pollution and noise at a typical major intersection in this corridor, using existing conditions as the "base case" of a hypothetical alternatives analysis. While no changes are currently under consideration to the corridor, air pollution and noise impacts could be estimated for alternative scenarios based on projected changes in traffic volumes, speeds, and composition.

[TOP]