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April 5, 2007

Opinion: Even in Alaska they ask who wants the bridges to nowhere

By Allan Tesche

The (Washington, D.C.) Examiner

WASHINGTON - Sniffing for government waste in 2005, budget watchdogs were going to save taxpayers a bundle by removing congressional earmarks on appropriations for Alaska’s notorious “bridges to nowhere.” After a national uproar, the earmarks were removed, but Alaska began receiving hundreds of millions in federal transportation dollars to spend as the state saw fit.

The Alaska Legislature promptly put its own earmark on the money, however, and in 2006 appropriated $93.4 million to begin building the Knik Arm Crossing in Anchorage and $91 million to build the Gravina Island bridge in Kecthikan.

The Knik Bridge will have cost $600 million when it’s finished, assuming no cost overruns. With $93.4 million in federal money and a few million in state funds coming, promoters of the Anchorage bridge are in business.

The Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority (KABATA) was formed to build and operate the bridge. The authority is now seeking private investors willing to pay up to $500 million to finish the bridge in exchange for 55 years of toll revenues. The bridge would span the muddy waters of the Cook Inlet where Beluga whales swim and save locals a few minutes of drive time to their favorite recreation areas on the other side of the water.

Under federal law, KABATA was required to obtain approval from the Anchorage Assembly, which is our city council, adding the bridge to the city’s transportation plan. KABATA’s lobbyists met with assembly members and, one day before the assembly voted, released a poll showing that 66 percent of local residents supported the project.

A glossy colored brochure trumpeting poll results confirmed the presence of a well-planned campaign to win assembly support for the project. The poll and KABATA’s lobbying paid off: The assembly approved the project and recommended the bridge be added to the local transportation plan. It is not known if state or federal funds were used to pay for the poll, distribute results to the media or to assembly members.

But all is not well in a city that looks on the new bridge with growing skepticism. Citing the project’s costs and risk to a local economy whose benefits are “contingent, speculative and not significant,” the city’s planning commission unanimously recommended against going ahead with the project.

Every neighborhood organization that has spoken to the project has recommended against the bridge or demanded guarantees that no Anchorage neighborhood would be harmed in its construction and city funds will not be used to build or maintain the bridge.

Even the bridge’s boosters on the assembly revealed their own misgiving about the project through conditions they attached to its approval: One required a firm project budget, completion of environmental studies and a fiscal plan before construction.

The assembly also demanded a guarantee that additional local or state funds would not be used, only confirming local sentiment that if Anchorage has to have the bridge, local residents should not be responsible for underwriting the project.

The assembly also demanded protection for neighborhoods, which will be impacted by construction and required KABATA to spend $200 million more to prevent expected traffic jams in Anchorage.

The bottom line is that KABATA is completing a final Environmental Impact Statement while watching nervously over Beluga whales in the inlet and trying to sell a bridge that too many Anchorage residents simply don’t want.

Allan Tesche is a member of the Anchorage Assembly and was one of two members who opposed adding the Knik Arm Bridge to the city’s transportation plan.

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