How Many Planners Does it Take to...?

The I-5 bridge across the Columbia River has needed replacement for a long time. A planning group with all the bells and whistles has spent years and $140 MILLION dollars working on this project and managed to get something as basic as the height wrong. Unfortunately too for the planners the opposition is not a bunch of lightweights but the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers, both of which must sign off on the project before construction begins. What in the Sam Hill is going on? Basically, willful ignorance.

Public testimony was given on the height issue at several points in the hearing process that made it clear that 125 feet was the minimum height for the bridge and even higher was preferable. The Coast Guard dredge that clears out river mouths (like after Mt. St. Helen blew) needs 116' to clear the bridge. Many sail boats have masts that need that much clearance. Several steel fabricators on the east side of the proposed location are building Alaska drilling rigs testified that they need 178' to get the completed rigs down river. All of these can get through the current bridge. And so the planners promptly blew off all this testimony and made a calculated gamble that setting the height at 95', which would cover 97% of all users, would be good enough. Well, it's not. Neither the Coast Guard nor the Corps are going to approve the project. Great.

This is a great real time example of what is wrong with government. It spends colossal amounts of taxpayer money listening to everybody from the Merry Waifs of Portland to the Herniated Umbilical Striped Snail Society and gets even the most basic stuff wrong - really wrong. The Marion County office building is another fine example of this same trend. Whoever is doing the planning on the Columbia Crossing project should be summarily fired and the work turned over to someone who knows what the heck they are doing. Government is working very, very poorly and we can no longer afford the lame excuses that are standard table fare when things go wrong.

www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2012/06/planners_ignored_river_users_w.html