Alabama officials are seeking federal permission to fill a stretch of wetlands and streams to move forward on the Birmingham Northern Beltline, a decades-long highway project that critics say is unnecessary and will destroy huge swaths of sensitive forests, wetlands and streams.
The Alabama Department of Transportation is requesting a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to fill 1.36 acres of wetlands and more than 10,000 linear feet of streams to build the next phase of the beltline, a 9.5-mile stretch of interstate highway north of Birmingham.
The Corps is taking public comments on the application through Saturday. The Army’s public notice about the project states that the applicant plans to purchase wetland and stream credits from an approved mitigation bank to offset the project’s “unavoidable impacts to waters of the United States.”…