Texas view on environment is 18 lanes wide-critics

HOUSTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) As US President George W Bush readies a new plan on global warming, environmentalists say an 18-lane highway going up in Houston speaks volumes about how people in his home state of Texas view the planet.

Between 2003 and 2009, 2.7 billion dollars of state and federal money will have been plowed into expanding 40 km of Interstate-10 in west Houston to as wide as 18 lanes in some stretches of the city's main east-west road.

''It is a concrete monstrosity,'' said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in the Texas city who fought the expansion of ''I-10'' and lost. ''It probably shows as much as anything the philosophy of development here.'' In his annual State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, Bush is expected to call for a massive increase in the use of ethanol a fuel made from corn and other farm products to try to reduce US dependency on oil imports.

Environmentalists say more often he is on the wrong track.

They had sought to preserve a rail line that ran along I-10 for a commuter train that someday might bring workers to the city from distant suburbs. But after 15 years of study and discussion about the highway, state officials decided to go with a highway-only strategy.

''You can simply get to your destination quicker and better in a car,'' Bob Lanier, a former Houston mayor, said. If you can get there faster in a car, you are not going to take a train.'' Texas has a long history of putting energy interests ahead of conservation. The nation's second most populous state also generates greenhouse gases as one of the world's largest oil-refining and petrochemical manufacturing centers.

Bush, who had no direct hand in the Houston highway expansion, was governor of Texas from January 1995 until just before he became president in January 2001. He grew up in Midland and Houston and owned a Texas oil and gas business.

''Texas has always been pretty far over on the side of exploiting natural resources and not worrying about the consequences,'' Richard Murray, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said. ''Texas generates a huge amount of carbon dioxide because we are such big energy consumers.'' SPRAWLING HOUSTON The sprawling Houston metropolitan area, home to more than 5 million people, caters to drivers. Multi-deck parking garages are affixed to most large apartment complexes and there are drive-through lanes at pharmacies, banks, dry cleaners and coffee shops like Starbucks Corp .

Lanier, a real estate developer who was chairman of the Texas Highway Commission from 1983 to 1987, said the city's decision to go with buses rather than rail for a mass transit system was the only option that made sense for such a low-density city where rail stations were impractical.

Part of the difficulty in weaning Houston off road building, environmentalist Blackburn said, is that the decades-long debate over transit planning has been dominated by the region's energy interests and by developers who made their fortunes building homes in far-flung suburbs.

Those pro-growth interests have appealed to Texas voters' preference for rugged individualism over government action.

Lanier shrugs off any environmental woes that might come with the expanded highway.

''You get a better environmental report moving people rapidly where they want to go, rather than having them sit in traffic,'' he said.

Downtown there is a 12 km light rail line that was built entirely with local taxes after years of fighting over the idea and the funding.

Bush has pushed for the use of alternative fuels like hydrogen and ethanol and in his State of the Union address a year ago decried America's ''addiction'' to oil.

But that is little comfort to a man who has spent 35 years fighting for balance between economic and environmental interests in Texas.

''There's a sort of arrogance that comes from an oil producing state,'' Blackburn said. ''You've always been able to drill and produce your way out of a problem.

REUTERS SY DS109