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July 7, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
New life for a replacement I-5 bridge over the Columbia River
VANCOUVER, Wash.— Some
Southwest Washington legisla-
tors, transportation officials,
union officials, small business
owners, and political and com-
munity activists met June 22 in
an effort to breathe new life into
replacing the aging and con-
gested Interstate 5 lift-span
bridges that connect Portland
and Vancouver.
The meeting was coordinated
by the I-5 Bridge Replacement
Group, an organization formed
more than three years ago by
members of the Labor Round-
table of Southwest Washington
to thank supporters of the de-
funct Columbia River Crossing
(CRC) project. But the group
never stopped trying to build
community consensus for a re-
placement bridge.
The need for the project
hasn’t changed. And the need to
do something hasn’t changed,
said Bob Schaefer, a former state
legislator from Clark County
and a co-founder of the group.
“We’ve got all the back-
ground. We’ve got all the stud-
ies. We need to have dialogue to
build consensus on a project that
can move forward, and still pro-
vide a benefit that everyone
needs,” Schaefer told the Labor
Press.
The group has now focused
its attention on getting replace-
ment of the I-5 bridge desig-
nated as a “project of statewide
significance” in both Washing-
ton and Oregon. Doing so would
allow the construction permit-
ting process to be expedited.
Earlier this year, the Washing-
ton Legislature passed a bill that
directs the Washington Depart-
ment of Transportation (WDOT)
to review and document all of the
work that went into the planning
of the CRC. The purpose is to
give lawmakers some idea as to
what work is still valid, what
work needs to be re-done, and
what might be the best path for-
ward to replace the I-5 bridge.
Senate Bill 5806 requires
WDOT to report its findings to
the Washington Legislature by
Dec. 1 — along with a recom-
mendation as to whether it
should be designated as a project
of statewide significance.
Additionally, the bill calls for
creation of a 16-member legisla-
tive action committee comprised
of lawmakers from Washington
and Oregon, with the first meet-
ing to be held no later than Dec.
15, 2017. Washington lawmak-
ers allocated $350,000 to con-
duct the work.
Snarled traffic on the Interstate 5 Bridge is a daily occurrence.
Whether Oregon lawmakers
will get on board is still not clear.
The Oregon Legislature wraps
up its 2017 session on July 10.
The I-5 Bridge Replacement
Group invited Kris Strickler, re-
gional administrator for WDOT,
to its meeting June 22 to discuss
what needs to happen in order to
get an I-5 replacement bridge
“shovel-ready.”
Attending the meeting were
Washington state Sen. Annette
Cleveland (who drafted SB
5806), state Rep. Sharon Wylie,
a representative for U.S. Sen.
Patty Murray, Vancouver Mayor
pro-tem Anne McEnerny-Ogle,
Matt Ransom, executive director
of the Regional Transportation
Council, union officials from
Teamsters, Carpenters, Laborers,
and the Southwest Washington
Central Labor Council, two rep-
resentatives from the Cowlitz In-
dian Tribe, and others.
Before it was scrapped in
2014, the CRC had secured all of
the necessary permits to begin
construction — including an En-
vironmental Impact Statement
(EIS) and hard-to-get permits
from the Coast Guard and Fed-
eral Aviation Administration.
Any replacement bridge go-
ing forward, Strickler said,
would have to get new permits
or refresh old permits for all of
the work — but not necessarily
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from scratch.
“If we have one project that
applied for a permit and received
a permit, and that project
changes, we do have to go back
and get those permits again,” he
said. “It doesn’t mean you start
from ground zero. What it means
is, you start from the point where
the change occurs and you have
that discussion with those re-
source agencies.”
Strickler said all of the previ-
ous technical work on the CRC
“was based on solid foundation
by solid experts from multiple
agencies.” He acknowledged,
however, that the process to re-
new or refresh the permits will
take a significant amount of ef-
fort and time—possibly two or
three years.
And there is no doubt a new
bridge project will have
changes. The failed CRC in-
cluded a five-mile stretch of
freeway, multiple interchanges
and light-rail extension, in addi-
tion to a single bridge with six
through lanes (three lanes
North, and three lanes South)
and four auxiliary lanes. [The
current I-5 bridge is actually two
bridges. The northbound bridge
is 100 years old. The south-
bound bridge was built in 1958.
Both are liftspans, and both
have three lanes.]
It came with a price tag of
$3.6 billion.
The federal government had
committed to pick up the $850
million cost for light rail, so long
as Oregon and Washington each
ponied up $450 million. The re-
mainder of the financing was to
come from tolls.
In 2013, the Democrat-con-
trolled Oregon Legislature ap-
proved spending $450 million.
But in Washington, Republican
state Sens. Don Benton of Van-
couver and Ann Rivers of La
Center blocked a bill that would
have allocated its portion of the
financing. Had the bill got to the
floor, it would have passed.
The following year, Oregon’s
then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, a De-
mocrat, tried to go it alone with
a scaled-down bridge project. In
the 2014 short session of the
Legislature, HB 4113 had ma-
jority support in the House, but
not in the Senate. When the ses-
sion adjourned without a bill,
the Oregon Department of
Transportation officially shut
down the project.
Federal funding went away,
and not much has been done
since 2014.
All of the previous
technical work on the
CRC “was based on solid
foundation by solid
experts from multiple
agencies.”