By Shawn Hogendorf
And it all comes down to this…
Legislation to exempt the $690 million St. Croix River Crossing Project from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act will finally be debated today on the House floor.
A suspension vote is expected Thursday—and will bring the decades-long battle that has played out in the courts and various political arenas to an end.
Support for the project boasts wide-ranging bipartisan support from a cast of unlikely allies including Rep. Michele Bachmann, Sen. Al Franken; Governors Mark Dayton and Scott Walker; and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Ron Johnson.
Klobuchar’s bill, The St. Croix River Crossing Authorization Act, unanimously passed through the Senate last month, but then appeared to lose steam in the House.
Bachmann told the Star Tribune that she originally sought to include the bridge project in a major highway bill making its way through the Transportation Committee. But that bill may not have met Dayton’s March 15 deadline to be signed into law or he would reallocate state funding to other projects.
Just one week later, the bill was placed on the suspension calendar by House leadership.
“For over a decade, I have worked on the St. Croix River Crossing Project," Bachmann said in a statement. “My constituents are eager for a new crossing to be built. This project has gone unfinished for far too long. I am confident now, 23 years after plans were drawn for the St. Croix River Crossing Project, we will finally see it brought to a successful resolution.”
That resolution may come after 40 minutes of debate today, and a two-thirds majority vote on Thursday, which would then land the bill on the president’s desk for approval.
"This is a miracle on the order of parting the seas like Moses did," Bachmann told Minnesota Public Radio yesterday. "We are absolutely thrilled. We've prevailed upon the leadership in the House."
The bill has drawn strong opposition from Representatives Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison, former Vice President and U.S. Senator Walter Mondale, the U.S. Department of Interior, Taxpayers for Common Sense, the National Parks Service Conservation Association, the Sierra Club and American Rivers.
The bill is “bad fiscal policy, bad transportation policy and bad environmental policy,” McCollum wrote in a letter to her colleagues. “If this was just a local issue Congress would not be taking action to make an unprecedented exemption to federal law. I urge you to vote against S. 1134.”
“I know Rep. Bachmann is working to deliver her $700 million mega-bridge for Wisconsin commuters, which raises taxes on Oak Park Heights families and causes traffic misery for residents along Highway 36," McCollum said. "This is a bad bill for the majority of my constituents.”
Governor Dayton disagrees.
He wrote letters to House Majority Leader John Boehner and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urging support of the proposed legislation to allow the construction of a “desperately needed new bridge.”
The new bridge is a top priority for both states, as an increasing number of people are choosing to live near the western border of Wisconsin and work or shop across the river in Minnesota, Dayton wrote. The proposed bridge will benefit both economies, he wrote.
“That commerce is now being severely constricted by the inadequacy of the existing Stillwater Lift Bridge,” Dayton wrote. “The limitations of a two-lane historic bridge, the demands of raising and lowering the bridge, and the ongoing maintenance and operations have raised concerns about safety on the bridge as well as on the approach roadways.”
But Ryan Alexander, the president of the Taxpayers for Common Sense Action, says that passage of the bill would “mandate construction of an enormous and wasteful bridge.”
"The proposed bridge is too large in scope and therefore far too expensive for taxpayers," Alexander wrote in a letter to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "At $700 million, it would be the most expensive bridge ever built in Minnesota, yet would carry just 18,000 cars per day when it opens. By contrast, the rebuilt I-35W bridge cost $234 million and carries 130,000 cars per day. In addition, just six miles from the site of the proposed bridge, an interstate crossing over the same river limits the need for such a large crossing here."
In addition to cost, the impact of the proposed bridge on the environment is also a point of contention.
By granting an exemption to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for this project, the National Parks Conservation Association argues that Congress would "effectively overturn 40 years of protections and set a terrible precedent that could threaten the 166 other rivers that are protected."
In a letter to House Democrats, Mondale wrote that he has an enormous respect for Klobuchar and Franken, but disagrees with their position on this project.
Constructing “a massive new bridge” over the objections of the National Park Service would be a “profound mistake,” Mondale wrote.
“This legislation would allow, for the first time in the 44-year history of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the construction of a new bridge over a river protected by this landmark legislation that I was privileged to co-sponsor in 1968 with my Wisconsin colleague, the late Gaylord Nelson,” Mondale wrote. “There is considerable history and controversy regarding this proposed bridge over the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in Stillwater.”
But Dayton says the proposed bridge “best meets the two states’ transportation needs with the fewest impacts on the natural, social and cultural environment.”
"If the proposed location for this new bridge were in a natural stretch of this beautiful river, I would not support it, regardless of transportation needs," Dayton wrote. "However the site is only about 50 yards south of the existing Lift Bridge, and borders the growing town of Stillwater. On its Minnesota side, the new bridge would be immediately adjacent to a coal-powered electricity-generating plant, which spews large plumes of smoke well above the bridge's level, and a glass manufacturing plant. Thus, it is by no means a scenic site of a scenic river. It is, rather, a cosmopolitan and industrial site, whose improved transportation is imperative to its future economic growth and social well-being.”
The proposal has been thoroughly vetted through the stakeholder process to identify “a new, mutually agreeable river crossing,” Dayton wrote. If the project was subjected to another stakeholder process and redesign that would “likely be its death knell.”
The state and federal funds are time-sensitive, he wrote. “The choice is not between a proposed bridge and an alternative. It is between that bridge and no bridge for probably the next two decades.”
St. Croix River Crossing Debate Today, Vote Expected on Thursday (Hudson, WI Patch)
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