Environmentalists and Their Opponents Join to Block Bridge

Insight on the News, March 26, 2001 by Sean Paige

A frequently heard criticism of Washingtonians is that they live like gods on Mount Olympus, isolated from the impact that the roles they make, administer and enforce have on mere mortals living elsewhere in the realm. The "New Olympians" may have much more time to ponder that critique in the near future as they sit in their autos by the thousands, gridlocked because a heavily trafficked span across the Potomac River has collapsed and no replacement has been built due to the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The ESA won't actually push the present Woodrow Wilson Bridge into the river, of course; gravity, shortsighted design work and shoddy construction all will play a large part in its untimely demise. But ESA may make a planned replacement bridge impossible to build or smaller than traffic requires, or tie its construction up in so many knots that it won't be finished before the wheezing old eyesore finally gives out, severing a major artery between Virginia and Maryland.

At least that's the hope of the National Wilderness Institute (NWI) in Washington, which recently filed a lawsuit to stop construction of the replacement bridge, invoking its possible impact on endangered species. The group claims that environmental assessments on the bridge project are flawed and incomplete and that it and another area construction project, the Washington Aqueduct, may harm eagles, shortnose sturgeons and dwarf wedge mussels.

In doing so, NWI mimics the tactics of "green" groups all across the West, which for years have used ESA to stop dams, block development and generally gum up the works wherever industrial civilization has encroached on their Arcadian ideal.

The largely symbolic lawsuit has the support of some Western lawmakers, who believe their states unfairly have borne the brunt of a badly written ESA, while the East, where the law still is widely lauded, has gotten off easy and doesn't understand its impact and implications. "The Washington area is about to be introduced to the Endangered Species Act, and people may find that it is much easier to love that law from afar" wrote Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif., in a recent op-ed explaining the lawsuit. "The bridge reconstruction and Washington Aqueduct are receiving special treatment" wrote Radanovich, "and being allowed to bypass environmental standards that federal officials routinely impose on similar projects `outside the Beltway.'"

Ironically, groundbreaking on a new capital-area headquarters for the robo-regulators in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also may be delayed because of a lawsuit by the Sierra Club and two other environmental groups. They say the FDA and the General Services Administration failed to comply with environmental and other federal laws in their site-selection process. Construction on the 2.3 million-square-foot complex, located on 700 acres in Silver Spring, Md., formerly used by the Navy, was slated to begin this month but has been opposed since 1995 by the Sierra Club because it allegedly skirts the letter of environmental law.

It's always fun seeing the roles-and-regulations crowd wriggle and squirm, hoist, as they say, by their own petard. So sic 'em, Sierra Club! Sic 'em!!!