Legal Heroes

Jane Feldman

Jane Feldman began her career as an enthusiastic and tenacious Sierra Club volunteer eight years ago, after she retired from her prior career as an Air Force officer. When Jane first became involved with the Sierra Club's Southern Nevada Group, she devoted her energies to protecting habitat and biodiversity in Nevada's sensitive desert ecosystems, which led her to serve as the Group's Conservation Chair and as the Toiyabe Chapter's Conservation Chair. She widened her focus to encompass community health and urban sprawl when a proposed highway widening project threatened the health and quality of life for residents in her Las Vegas community.

Jane Feldman (left) with fellow Sierra Club volunteer Rita Ranson

Jane saw opposition to the U.S 95 widening project as an opportunity to raise awareness of the harmful health effects of highway air pollution and the benefits of transportation alternatives in the rapidly growing Las Vegas metropolis. The project involved adding four more lanes to an existing six-lane highway, bringing increased traffic and toxic air pollution closer to adjacent elementary and high schools, community centers, day care facilities and numerous homes. When the Club took legal action against the Federal Highway Administration to require them to consider and mitigate the highway's health effects, Jane served as the Law Program's on the ground liaison and spokesperson. Joanne Spalding, the lead Sierra Club attorney working on the case, described how Jane's diligence, enthusiasm, and knowledge made her an essential asset, stating that "when the Southern Nevada Group needed a volunteer to work on transportation and air quality issues, Jane jumped right in even though her passion had been wilderness issues. She advocated transit solutions for Las Vegas in endless local agency meetings, where she developed and maintained relationships with local officials that paid off when it came time to negotiate and implement the U.S. 95 settlement. Her diligent efforts helped us achieve solutions, both locally and nationally, to address the health hazards of highway air pollution on children and others who live and attend school near highways."

The legal fight against the highway was long, difficult, and controversial. Despite backlash and set backs, however, Jane's efforts never wavered, her persistence and dedication fueled by a wealth of information on the dangers of highway pollution. A number of scientific studies show that communities exposed to highway air pollution have a higher incidence of cancer, heart attacks, low birth weight babies, asthma attacks, bronchitis, and various other heart and lung diseases. Many of these studies reveal that children and developing fetuses are at greatest risk from exposure to toxic air pollution from major roadways. Jane stated that "taking action against the highway widening project was very difficult to explain and get support for. But after I'd looked at the science I knew it had to get done."

In June 2005, the Sierra Club reached a landmark settlement with the Federal Highway Administration and the Nevada Department of Transportation to help prevent children who live and attend school near U.S. 95 from being exposed to increased levels of dangerous highway air pollution. The settlement resulted in a national study to characterize toxic air pollution from highways to gain a better understanding of how these substances behave and determine what mitigation techniques work. In addition, it provides funding to install air filtration systems in the schools next to the highway, move portable buildings and school playground equipment away from the expanded roadway, and retrofit diesel school buses to minimize harmful emissions. This favorable outcome has created even more work for Jane. Now that the settlement has been reached, she is diligently working to cut through red tape so that the outcomes are actually implemented. Barriers may remain, however so does Jane's conviction: "I am absolutely convinced that we've made a huge difference, not just for the children in the schools here but for people across the nation in getting them to look at this issue and face these pollution problems. The face of highway construction has changed because of this."