Lower St. Croix National Wild and Scenic Riverway
STATUS: ENDANGEREDFrom the Gordon and Namekagon dams in northern Wisconsin to Prescott, the St. Croix National Wild and Scenic Riverway system forms a ribbon of federally protected waterway. The 2.7 million residents of the Twin Cities metro area can make a day trip to enjoy this area.
Map of the lower St. Croix
STATUS: ENDANGERED
A new superbridge could slice through this National Wild and Scenic Riverway.
DESCRIPTION
The beauty of the St. Croix River Valley contributed to the creation of the U.S. National Wild and Scenic Rivers System (NWSRS). Established in 1968, the NWSRS includes 160 protected waterway segments nationwide. Beginning at Stillwater, the protected Riverways open space expands substantially to include a natural lake two miles long and up to a half mile wide. It was formed when alluvial deposits accumulated farther south at the end of the last ice age. This entire lake, framed by nearly continuous, second- growth forest, is visible from countless angles along its bluffs and shorelines, and especially from various vantage points in the historic river town of Stillwater.
From south of Taylor's Falls, the National Riverway comes into increasing conflict with human development — from the Twin Cities metro into Wisconsin on the eastern side of the Riverway. Minnesota State Highway 36, a four-lane expressway that crosses St. Paul's first-ring northern suburbs and central Washington County, terminates half-way across Stillwater's 1931 Lift Bridge, a registered National Historic Landmark.
Because of the way transportation planning works in the U.S., the Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of transportation (DOTs) have for decades considered a new bridge south of Stillwater to be the only acceptable way of increasing travel capacity across the St. Croix River.
Such a bridge would be visually massive, akin to drawing a sharp horizontal tear across a priceless landscape painting. Its unimpeded, high-speed traffic would impact the St. Croix's surrounding bluffs and water surface with high, constant levels of vehicle and roadway noise. If built as the DOTs prefer, the decision whether to establish transit service to and from the accelerating Wisconsin-side suburbs would be left to the chronically underfunded Metro Transit and the often deadlocked Minnesota Legislature. Bridge piers would massively disturb endangered native mussels and aquatic ecosystems and the Wisconsin side of the Riverway will see an explosion of housing and commercial development.
"The growing number of commuters in Wisconsin have no transit options, because St. Croix County has never considered any," says Mat Hollinshead, the Sierra Clubs delegate to a current mediation process, whose own family has had a lake cabin in the county since 1948. The state boundary, and starvation financing of the Twin Cities' Metro Transit agency, have been major barriers to good transportation planning around the St. Croix Riverway, he notes.
Because of the scale of the forces at work, the issue is not simple. St. Croix County is the fastest growing county in Wisconsin. Downtown Stillwater's federally and state-designated Historic Lift Bridge, a two-lane 1931 steel truss structure with a lift span that rises several times per day in the summer to allow boat traffic to pass, creates temporary peak-hour traffic queues in Stillwater's narrow downtown streets and on the Highway 64 approach down through the Wisconsin-side bluff.
The DOT's most specific proposal for a new bridge came in 1995: a long, freewaystyle, bluffcut-tobluffcut fly-over viaduct launched on the Minnesota side from Oak Park Heights and landing on the Wisconsin side somewhat to the north. Its cross section and technology would have resembled those of the Interstate 94 bridge at Hudson, six miles to the south. Its curvature over the water, however, would actually have created a profile blocking not just the north-south vista but, from many angles, also the east-west vistas, because it would have brought the bridge alignment diagonally upriver.
THREAT AND RESPONSE
In 1996, the Sierra Club sued the National Park Service (NPS) in federal court for not fulfilling its responsibility to review new bridge projects that may impact the Riverway. The NPS performed the review and, when finished, refused to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a permit.
Business and real estate interests in Wisconsin have pushed hard for the new bridge, and may be responsible for a Bush Administration proposal to exempt new highway bridges from the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (NWSRA). Such language could enable intrusive new bridges over National Wild and Scenic Riverways nationwide, and has drawn opposition from American Rivers, the American Canoe Association, and the Sierra Club's national office in Washington, D.C., among others.
If the issue were purely environmental it would be complex enough, but historic preservation plays a key role as well. In addition to Stillwater's Lift Bridge, the Stillwater Commercial District has historic landmark status. Both the Lift Bridge and the Commercial District are in scale with the Riverway's natural features.
According to the DOT, construction of a new bridge would remove the Lift Bridge from their highway systems, depriving it of funding. The Lift Bridge's twin towers and lift span are logos and symbols of the City of Stillwater, important to tourists and businesses. Some have proposed making them a pier. Others envision the entire Lift Bridge as a pedestrian/bicycle route, but there are no official plans, at any level, to retain the Lift Bridge's Wisconsin approaches if a new highway bridge is built downstream.
Given these historic preservation issues, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), another federal agency, refused to sign off on the 1995 Oak Park Heights proposal or a 2001 proposal called the "Braun C." It wants local and federal agreement first on the precise fate of the Lift Bridge.
View of the Stillwater Lift Bridge, which may become obsolete
with the construction of a new bridge south of Stillwater
photo: Mathews Hollinshead
CURRENT SITUATION
In early 2003, a new process was convened by RESOLVE a national mediation firm, including 28 "stakeholders" — the Sierra Club, other environmental and historic preservation advocates, Wisconsin business community representatives, and all federal, state, and local entities.
Early in the process, the Sierra Club proposed, and the other participants accepted for consideration as Alternative A, an 18-point Riverway Plan, including:
- transit infrastructure to serve Wisconsin, such as express bus routes, water shuttles, and commuter rail services, to relieve temporary peak-time traffic back-ups and provide mobility choices on both sides of, and across, the river;
- attractively landscaped, peak-hour bypass lanes in downtown Stillwater and the Wisconsin bridge approach for buses, carpools, and emergency vehicles;
- keeping the Lift Bridge open for traffic and on the trunk highway systems of the two states;
- establishing a transportation management organization (TMO) and a transit authority for the travelshed bisected by the Riverway;
- designating Wisconsin Highway 65 as a growth corridor for commercial development, to relieve pressure from Highways 64 and 35, the Wisconsin roads closest to the St. Croix;
- protecting Wisconsin Highway 35 as a connector between Houlton and North Hudson, but with zoning to preserve its current rural and scenic qualities;
- accelerating and enhancing a bicycle circulation system for St. Croix County, Wisconsin;
- implementing Wisconsin and Stillwater development consistent with a study by national expert Peter Calthorpe, commissioned by the Metropolitan Council three years ago; and
- linkage of St. Croix County planning with planning done by the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities, including transit planning.
IF YOU WANT TO GET INVOLVED
Mathews Hollinshead
Transportation Chair
Sierra Club North Star Chapter
651-698-0260
The Embrace Open Space campaign has more information on the St. Croix River Valley and other open space treasures around the Twin Cities.