
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990                   TAG: 9006110086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: associated press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

FAVOR TREES OVER SIGNS, FEDERAL OFFICIALS ORDER

Trees and other foliage should have the right of way over highway billboards, the Bush administration is telling states in a reversal of a 13-year-old federal policy.

It's a message the advertising industry doesn't want to hear. Environmentalists, on the other hand, are delighted.

Since 1977, government policy has been to allow states or advertisers themselves to chop down vegetation from public land to improve the visibility of outdoor advertising.

But the Federal Highway Administration, in a May 18 memo, told its regional administrators that the agency needed to conform with the Bush administration's new National Transportation Policy of "minimizing the negative side effects" of transportation on the environment.

Barbara Orski, director of the Federal Highway Administration's right-of-way office, said that regional administrators would work with each state to change laws or rescind any agreements with the industry.

by CNB