Although several local road-building projects are among those cited as continuing in non-compliance with federal Clean Air Act regulations, it seems unlikely any will be directly affected by last week's suit brought against transportation agencies by environmental advocates.

Projects "grandfathered" in Fayette County include a two-step widening of Ga. Highway 74 from Ga. Highway 54 all the way to Ga. Highway 85, plus the construction of bridges for the new lanes at Hwy. 74 at Flat Creek and Hwy. 54 at the railroad crossing. Cost is projected at upwards of $27 million.

In Coweta, road-widening projects have motorists dodging cones on Ga. Highway 34 most of the way from the Fayette County line to the City of Newnan. At least one bridge will be built and the ramps to Interstate 85 will be under reconstruction. Cost: at least $35 million.

Eric Meyer of The Georgia Conservancy sees little impact on local construction activity, saying he is not sure that it is in fact related to the federally-funded projects named in the suit.

"Most are just in the right-of-way phase," he said, "few are actually in construction. But that's our next step, the discovery phase, to find out just what is going on."

Wesley Woolf of the Southern Environmental Law Center said, "We're not out there to kill all highways some folks will try to lay the blame for stopping [construction] at our feet. The blame really lies with those who knew what the law was and proceeded to poorly plan or not plan at all.

"We need to have the people in Coweta and Fayette and other counties beginning to think regionally. In an ideal world the residents of your counties in reading about this lawsuit would say to themselves, Yes we have some road projects and they're a small contribution to the air quality problem. All these contributions are small but it adds up to large public health issue for those with respiratory illnesses....