Take it to the bridge

It's a done deal:

President Obama signed legislation Wednesday authorizing construction of the long-awaited St. Croix River bridge, ending decades of debate, planning and litigation with the stroke of a pen.

The president's signature comes two weeks after Congress gave the needed environmental clearances for the $690 million project, the largest public works project in state history.

Not that there wasn't some heartache involved, especially on the DFL side:

"Basically, the bill is done, and the bridge will be built," said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who authored the final legislation granting the project an exemption from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, a landmark environmental law authored by her political mentor, former Vice President Walter Mondale.

The strange tag team that brought this thing to fruition consisted of Klobuchar, Al Franken and Michele Bachmann. Among those opposed were Mondale, Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison. A few thoughts:

• I came to Minnesota at the end of 1992. Throughout those 20 years, this bridge project has been an ongoing debate. Had the bridge been built at any point before now, the project would have cost significantly less than it will cost now.
• The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was the main bulwark for the environmentalists who have been blocking the project. It's always struck me as strange that this law would even apply here. If you look at the artist's rendering of the bridge that accompanies the Star Tribune article, you'll note a feature on the Minnesota side of the river -- the giant smokestack that accompanies a power plant. You can see that smokestack in Stillwater and you can see it when you cross the I-94 bridge, some six miles to the south. The St. Croix has always been a working river -- millions of logs were sent down the river to Stillwater in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so it was passing strange that this law even applied to the St. Croix.
• Life will improve immeasurably for people living in Stillwater. The Lift Bridge has been antiquated for at least 40 years and it pulled massive traffic through the downtown area, much of which was bound for the Twin Cities and beyond. The new bridge will take the huge trucks out of Stillwater.
• Some are grumbling that the primary purpose of the bridge is to make development in western Wisconsin easier. Certainly it will, but it doesn't mean that Minnesota necessarily will lose business or population to Wisconsin. We can do rather a lot of things to keep businesses and people on the Minnesota side of the bridge, but it will mean improving the business climate so that Minnesota can compete. Competition is a good thing.