Stillwater River Crossing Brings Local Debate to National Stage

Once again a plan to replace Stillwater’s historic lift bridge has sparked quite the debate, this time bringing a local issue to Washington D.C.

As Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) bill to replace the Stillwater Lift Bridge gains steam, its opponents argue that the proposal is out of scale, fiscally irresponsible and would set a “dangerously low standard” for granting exemptions to the Wild and Scenic River Act.

Those critics include Oak Park Height’s Mayor David Beaudet and Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN), a St. Paul resident. Although Beaudet opposes the bill, the City of Oak Park Heights says his view of the plan is not one that is shared by the city.

On the other side of the coin, the bill has garnered support from Stillwater Mayor Ken Harycki, Curt Geissler, president of , and Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN).

Bachmann’s bill, H.R. 850, passed a congressional subcommittee last week, will be referred to the full Committee on Natural Resources and is expected to move to the floor of the House of Representatives for consideration.

Following the hearing, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) told the press it’s a “dumb issue” that should have been solved long ago, but is being held up by the federal government.

Harycki—with bags of cement and steel from the Stillwater Lift Bridge in his hand— in support of Bachmann’s bill.

The the lift bridge is "dangerously outdated," he said. It has an accident rate double that of the state average.

“This bridge is functionally obsolete, fracturally critical; meaning that if something fails on the bridge, it would collapse,” Harycki said.

Geissler, who also on behalf of Bachmann’s bill, said the current bridge causes significant delays when providing field and hospital care to patients.

“For people in critical condition minutes count,” he said. “If this was your loved one, you would not want timely medical care to be dependent on a lift bridge schedule or the amount of traffic on a particular day or time. Adding 25 miles (to use the I-94 river crossing) to an ambulance ride is unacceptable.”

But the argument isn’t whether a new bridge is needed, but rather this proposal’s size, cost and impact on the St. Croix River Valley, Beaudet counters.

“We need a new bridge crossing the St. Croix River,” he said. “But the bridge that is referenced in H.R. 850 is a project that is inflated and out of scale.

"It is out of scale for the tax payers who will pay for it; it is out of scale for the property owners who will live with the impact of this giant structure; and it is out of scale for the river itself and the Lower St. Croix Valley.”

The project has long been discussed, but “bureaucratic delays” and environmental lawsuits have stopped it, despite adequate funding from both states, Bachmann said.

Each month the project is delayed, the cost escalates by about $3.17 million, according to Bachmann, a Stillwater resident. What started as an $80 million project in 1982, now has a cost of almost $700 million, she said.

“The states of Wisconsin and Minnesota are working together to fund the project, with a large portion of the bonding authority already set aside,” Bachmann said. “I am pleased that my underlying bill does not appropriate a dime.”

While McCollum agrees with the need of a new river crossing, she says the plan is excessive and will cost far more than $700 million when all is said and done.

“This legislation can only be described as a stalking horse for an excessively expensive mega-bridge to be built only six miles from the existing eight-lane Interstate-94 St. Croix River crossing,”McCollum said. “

The proposal doesn’t take into consideration the revamping of roadways from the bridge into St. Paul, she continued. There has been little attention paid to the traffic congestion that a new interstate-style bridge in Stillwater would add to the State Highway 36 corridor, which would affect Oakdale, Maplewood, Mahtomedi, Roseville and North St. Paul, she said.

“If there is enough traffic projected to justify building a bridge that costs nearly three times as much as the new Interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis, then the communities along State Highway 36 should expect to be overrun with thousands more semi-trucks, buses and daily commuters,” McCollum said. “Expanding State Highway 36 to accommodate an interstate-style bridge in Stillwater could raise the true cost of the mega-bridge project close to $1 billion dollars.

“H.R. 850 uses only 41 words to end over 40 years of federal protection for the St. Croix River,” she continued. “Regretfully, the effect of this legislation would be far less economical than its language.”

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act

In addition to questioning the cost and size of Bachmann’s proposal, McCollum also takes issue with Congress granting an exemption to the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act if the bill passes.

"Granting an exemption to the Wild and Scenic River Act would be nothing short of fiscally reckless and a violation of the principle of local control,” McCollum said.

The upper portion of the St. Croix River was one of the original eight rivers included in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The lower 52 miles of the St. Croix, where this bridge is proposed, was designated to that Act in 1972.

Since the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed in 1968, only extremely rare modifications have been granted by Congress, McCollum said.

H.R. 850 “is not deserving of the precedent,” she said. The bill should be rejected as an “assault on one of the most successful laws to protect America’s natural treasures.”

Bachmann disagrees.

“The ‘visual pollution’ argument is quite disingenuous in its claim that a beautiful landscape would be marred by an environmentally-designed new bridge, when the existing bridge is a short distance away from a sewage treatment plant and a power plant with a giant smoke stack,” Bachmann said.

The project is currently at an impasse due to a ruling from the U.S. District Court vacating the National Park Service Section 7(a) permit of 2005 in March 2010.

"Nothing in that March 2010 ruling allows for any bridge to be in compliance with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968, because nothing in the Act allows the National Park Service to approve a bridge project unless the impact to the river values are eliminated,” Bachmann said. “This is impossible."

Over the years property owners have worked together to protect the St. Croix riverway by giving up home improvements and not building on or grading land that would harm the river, Beaudet said. After the "controversial" A.S. King power plant was built, citizens began work to protect the St. Croix River from further damaging developments, he said.

“After the King plant was built, everyone agreed and realized that a mistake had been made,” Beaudet said. “Lets not make that same mistake today by adding yet another oversized structure to this beautiful river.”

It’s been difficult to find the “right plan” that balances the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Transportation Act of 1996 and the National Historic Preservation Act, Harycki said. The location of the new bridge is “appropriate,” being proposed in a part of the river way that already hosts a power plant, a sewage treatment plant and a marina, he said.

“This part of the river is assuredly not wild and not historic like downtown Stillwater,” Harycki said. “It is the correct location for the river crossing.”