Freed: Blue Water Bridge Plaza is too big, too fast
The Blue Water bridge plaza project, a perhaps unwarranted $200 million+ project conceived in 2002, has come to life and died on paper on many different occasions, all along while bulldozing vibrant homes and businesses for, “future need." A gaping hole has been left in our community and no token amount of, “mitigation funds” will bring those homes or jobs back.
Today, dormant paper stacks once again come to life, thanks to a $25 million federal grant, which is set to expire in 2024 if not spent. MDOT, in an attempt to get those dollars spent before they lose them, is attempting to rush a now bloated $700 million+ revised plaza design to bid and construction starting in 2023. To put that project size into perspective, in today’s dollars, accounting for inflation, the Hoover Dam was built for just $800 million.
The new project design would encompass slightly less acreage, due to north Pine Grove Avenue work being removed from the scope of work, however, the project footprint is now much denser and has significant amounts of more pavement. MDOT now plans to bring four lanes of idling commercial truck traffic off I-94, for what the I-94 reconstruction project was designed to handle, and instead loop those idling trucks in a figure-eight within our city, just a few feet from a residential neighborhood.
In addition to protecting our natural resources within the project footprint, we care deeply about the young lungs and families who live along Scott Avenue and the vibrant neighborhood to the south of the planned project. No real consideration, due care, or environmental review has been completed to fully understand the effects of this new project scope on home values and lives of the people who live there.
To this point, we cannot, in good conscience, sit idly by.
One thing stands in the way of MDOT rushing this project through, further harming our community, and that is a Supplemental Environmental Impact Study, which is required under NEPA, otherwise known as the National Environmental Policy Act.
NEPA requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects (air quality, noise and light pollution, etc.) of their proposed actions prior to making decisions. It’s what required the current Environmental Impact Statement MDOT filed back in 2009, before the new bloated scope of work and density within the city was proposed. A simple review of the old impact study will not suffice, too much has changed.
MDOT doesn’t want to take the time to complete a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, because they fear it will take too long to complete and they may lose their $25 million grant, which is just a small portion of the proposed $700 million project.
Well, we believe that the welfare of our city and the lives of our residents are worth a pause, to review, complete due diligence and to fully understand the impacts of what MDOT is proposing in this new, denser scope of work.
This is the message I will carry with me to Lansing and Washington D.C. in the coming months.
James Freed, Port Huron City Manager, CAO
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Freed: Blue Water Bridge Plaza is too big, too fast
