WINDSOR, Ont. — This pivotal border town is poised to make good on its threat to take the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study to court if it refuses to add more green space and environmental safeguards to its proposed border truck feeder route.

According to the Windsor Star, council members and environmental lawyer met behind closed doors to decide whether they’ll pursue legal action.

Council voted on a strategy this week, but Mayor Eddie Francis would not reveal the results.

The City has spent the last year drying to convince DRIC to accept its much-touted GreenLink plan, which — designed by NY traffic expert Sam Schwartz — offers to tunnel 60 percent of the below-grade route over 4 km and includes lots of green park areas to better link communities and protect them from noise and vehicle emissions.

DRIC’s preferred $1.6 billion Windsor-Essex Parkway instead calls for 11 short tunnels over 2 km along the Huron Church-Talbot Road corridor, which is only about 25 percent of the route.

In an interview with todaystrucking.com earlier this year, Francis made it clear that he’d sue if he thought federal and provincial officials that make up DRIC failed to give the city’s preferred border proposal a fair shake.

He told us that DRIC’s own environmental mandate requires it to properly consider the solution that best protects the health of citizens and the environment, which, in the city’s legal opinion, is a blueprint that more closely resembles GreenLink.

Friday is the deadline for final public submissions before DRIC completes its environmental assessment (EA) at the end of the month.

Mayor Francis told The Star that the DRIC refuses to share the EA with city officials.

DRIC project manager Dave Wake responded by telling the paper that the agency doesn’t have an obligation to release technical data, only "the draft final environmental assessment that requires a response from the public or city."

He also said that DRIC went out of its way to assess not just GreenLink, but 15 other possible feeder route options before settling on the Windsor-Essex Parkway plan.

Incidentally, DRIC’s final proposal is the project favored by most high-ranking provincial politicians, including Onatrio Premier Dalton McGuinty.