On the issue of a new bridge across the St. Croix River, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has made a good point. Unfortunately, many people will be outraged by her introducing a bill to exempt a bridge from the federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act either because they do not want the bridge built or because they reflexively dislike any position the polemic-loving politician takes.
Before such people fill my inbox with angry e-mails, please hear me out.
The “rule of reason” is a term from jurisprudence, not economics. But reason is an important factor in applied environmental policy. One of the environmental movement’s perennial problems is that too many of its members forget that the ideal can often be the enemy of the excellent. Tradeoffs always exist. When purists insist on extremes that fail the test of reasonableness for the general population, the whole cause suffers.
The long-disputed bridge over the St. Croix is a case study of the importance of the rule of reason in policy issues. Society benefits from wilderness areas and from wild and scenic rivers. But with a growing population and a growing economy, society also needs transportation infrastructure, including bridges. Inevitably, such societal “goods” conflict. Rational people of good intent can reach different conclusions on what is reasonable.
There are situations where the consensus of reasonable people, expressed through the legislative process, results in a better outcome for society than litigation pursued to extremes, even though that seems to be the preferred route for many on both ends of the political spectrum.
When the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became law in 1968, it addressed a real problem. Development was encroaching on many beautiful rivers, reducing their natural beauty and reducing the pleasure of using them recreationally. In many cases, it was not that the entire length of a river was urbanized, but that building or other economic activity was chopping up scenic stretches of rivers so much that their overall benefit to society for scenic and recreational purposes was decreased.
The act did not intend to stop all economic activity or development near such rivers. And its drafters intentionally did not prescribe the same level of protection given to pristine areas in the Wilderness Act passed four years earlier. It certainly did not have the aim of establishing lengthy barriers to new transportation infrastructure in perpetuity. It did have the broad goal of protecting the natural character of designated rivers.
The intervening four decades have seen a body of agency regulations and legal precedents develop. These are the arenas in which the fight over the bridge has gone on for decades. They are the basis for a federal court decision banning a proposal for a four-lane bridge built high above the valley.
The problem is that the population and the metro area continue to grow. People need a place to live and need to get to jobs. The existing bridge is deficient, and existing traffic patterns impose significant external costs on Stillwater. For most people, the question is about which bridge and not about whether a bridge will be built at all.
If one is to be built, then the question becomes one of the marginal costs and benefits to society of a higher, wider or more visible bridge than a less obtrusive but lower-capacity one. On this, reasonable people can and will differ.
The tradeoff can be minimized by the esthetics of the design. As an environmentalist who has enjoyed canoeing on the St. Croix and its tributaries, I want the river to remain scenic. But as a bridge aficionado who has trekked into rural Switzerland to see some of the world’s most beautiful bridges, I believe it possible to build bridges that enhance scenic vistas rather than ruin them. The bridges of Swiss engineers Robert Maillart and Christian Menn are stunning examples of this. So is the French bridge at Millau opened in 2004.
That bridge has interesting parallels with Stillwater. It carries even heavier traffic —that of Route A-75 from Paris to Montpellier in southern France. It replaced an old bridge that required traffic to wind its way down the side of a valley, through the center of a rural town and then up the other side. On holidays, traffic backed up for miles. The total span of the new bridge is just more than 8,000 feet, and it cost some $400 million euros (about $560 million at 2011 exchange rates.)
Some environmental groups, including the World Wildlife Federation, objected. But European sensibilities are more open to seeing public works as sculptures rather than mere utilitarian infrastructure. A distinguished independent panel chose the final design based on multiple criteria among which appearance was important. And French centralism gives less power to objectors than does our country.
The valley of the River Tarn at Millau was as beautiful before the bridge as the St. Croix is now. Many find it just as beautiful, albeit different, now that the dramatic bridge leaps across the valley. Of course, some find it spoiled forever. Weighing those opposing points of view requires the rule of reason. And sometimes that is best expressed through legislation rather than court battles.
© 2011 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.