Peace Bridge solution might just get shorter
WASHINGTON — Government officials in the United States and Canada continue to worry that a soaring cable-stayed “signature bridge” between Buffalo and Fort Erie, Ont., could cause serious environmental problems.
As a result, the Peace Bridge Authority might consider making the “signature” smaller.
The Federal Highway Administration, in a document circulated recently to federal lawmakers and state officials, reiterated its worry that the proposal for a 567-foot high bridge — more than three times the height of Niagara Falls — could pose a threat to migrating birds, according to sources who have seen the confidential report.
The bridge authority, therefore, could decide to build a cable- stayed bridge no more than 350 feet high — one that looks much like the original design by noted designer Christian Menn but with three towers instead of two.
A shorter cable-stayed bridge would raise fewer issues than the original soaring design, according to Ron Rienas, the bridge authority’s general manager. He said he hopes the authority settles on a plan for moving forward, if not a bridge design itself, by the end of the summer.
Two months after the Federal Highway Administration agreed to take another look at the original signature design, Rienas said he hopes to get a final report from the federal authorities within a couple weeks.
But the early signs indicate that federal officials aren’t budging from their contention that the original bridge design could run afoul of U. S. and Canadian laws protecting the common tern and other migratory birds.
In spring, such worries had prompted the bridge authority to scrap the signature design in favor of a 226-foot-high triple-arched span.
“The height is a problem both for the U. S. federal agencies and for Environment Canada,” said Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, who met with federal highway officials last week to discuss the issue.
The Federal Highway Administration agreed to take another look at the design after Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., objected to the agency’s findings and insisted that it take one last look at switching back to a bigger, more impressive bridge.
Schumer acknowledged, though, that his continuing discussions with federal officials have not revived the signature design.
“We’re making good progress and would say that we’re better off than we were when all this started,” Schumer said. “But we’re not where we wanted to be.”
That’s largely because government officials on both sides of the border are guided by laws that could block a 567-foot high bridge.
On the U. S. side, the bridge would have to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Federal highway officials have briefed U. S. lawmakers and state Department of Transportation officials on “the upsides and the downsides” of various bridge designs, said Doug Hecox, a Federal Highway Administration spokesman.
“Not raising this could lead to a decision we could ultimately regret,” Hecox said.
Higgins said the new federal highway document on the issue essentially was a “risk assessment” of the design possibilities — and one that continued to stress the risk that the original signature span could fail a federal environmental review.
The same thing could happen in Canada. In fact, Environment Canada first warned of its concerns in a December 2006 memo.
“To minimize potential for adverse impacts on migratory birds, [Environment Canada] recommends that the bridge towers be considerably lower than the 560 [ feet] . . . currently proposed for the cable-stayed bridge option,” the agency said at the time.
Nothing has occurred since then to allay those fears, said Brent Valere, a biologist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, one of the agencies that will conduct the Canadian environmental review of the project.
While the ongoing U. S. environmental review process considered several possible bridge designs, the Canadian process will not begin in earnest until the bridge authority selects the bridge design it wants to build, Canadian officials said.
That means one of the options the Federal Highway Administration outlined in its memo — moving ahead on expanding the Peace Bridge truck plaza while continuing to study bridge design options — could further delay construction of the bridge, Rienas said.
But following that path, Rienas added, is possible because the plaza must be built before the bridge.
Given the continuing concerns over the Menn design — and the objections of Schumer and others to the triple-arched span — Rienas said the bridge authority could reconsider two other designs.
One features three 350-foot towers linked by cables, much like those in the original Menn design. The other features cables and a 295-foot tower on the Canadian side of the bridge, a 322-foot tower in the middle and a 350-foot tower on the U. S. side.
Environment Canada’s 2006 comments warn that, compared with other designs, cable-stayed bridges of any height pose more dangers to birds. But that memo also noted that “the risk to birds increases when towers exceed 500 feet, and experts have suggested that this threshold may be closer to 400 feet.”
Rienas stressed that the Canadian environmental review is an important — and so far underplayed — element in the discussions of the bridge design.
A focus solely on the U. S. side “only gets you half a bridge,” he said.
Rienas said he still hopes construction on the new plaza — also a source of controversy because of its proposal to eliminate homes in the nearby historic neighborhood — still could begin by late next year or early 2010.
Bridge construction itself would begin in 2011 and be completed by 2014 under the authority’s timetable, but that will depend in part on the Canadian environmental review that has yet to reach full speed.
How long will it take the Canadians to review this long-delayed project?
“There are no set time frames,” said Nicholas Girard, a spokesman for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. “It can be a week or it can be five years.”
