City Looks At Bridge Options Officials Taken Aback By Timing And Content Of Ecology Ruling

Spokane resident Mike Page stood before the City Council this week and asked a simple question with a complicated answer:

How did officials manage to spend more than $9 million on the Lincoln Street bridge project before learning the plan ran afoul of the city’s own shoreline protection laws?

“I’d like to have an answer … to get people like me back believing in what the city can do,” Page said.

After paying for a design and buying land for the project, city officials learned last week the state Department of Ecology had turned down an application for the shoreline permit needed to build the bridge over the Spokane River gorge.

While Page didn’t get an immediate response from the city, he isn’t alone in asking the question. Those inside City Hall want to know the same thing.

“It’s a Pandora’s box bringing that up,” Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers said Tuesday. “No one wants to admit that it fell through the cracks, … that somebody dropped the ball.”

“It’s an interesting question to pose on both sides,” said Councilwoman Roberta Greene, referring to staff members for the Ecology Department and the city.

Ecology Department and city officials point at each other when asked how the project got this far without the shoreline issue being tackled.

City Manager Bill Pupo said building the bridge is like building a house: You can’t ask for a building permit until the design is done.

“You have to present a reasonable drawing of what the bridge will look like,” Pupo said.

Project manager Brad Blegen maintained there were ample opportunities for the state to raise the shoreline issue during several meetings about the project that included Ecology officials.

Besides, Pupo and Blegen said, Ecology’s decision was clearly a misinterpretation of the law. The city’s hearing examiner approved the permit last fall based on the same shoreline criteria.

Ecology denied the permit based on a provision in the shoreline plan that prohibits any activity that “will tend to lessen or obliterate in part the falls and rapid areas.”

“What does ‘obliterate’ mean? What is ‘lessened?”’ Pupo said. “It’s really a definitional interpretation. It’s qualitative, not quantitative.”

Tony Grover of Ecology said the city could have asked his department years ago to look at preliminary bridge designs in light of the shoreline plan. In addition, city officials should have taken a closer look at their own plan, he said.

“That should have had a red flag brought up to them,” Grover said, adding that Ecology couldn’t make a final decision until it had seen the “complete bridge package.”

Grover said his department offered to have an environmental specialist oversee the permit application. Ecology also offered to let the city attend the application review meetings, Grover said.

“I don’t know what else we could have done,” he said.

Blegen said he never heard about Ecology’s offers.

As for misinterpreting the law, Grover said the state attorney general’s office agreed with Ecology’s decision. “We felt sufficiently unsure that we thought we needed a legal opinion,” Grover said.

Council members have raised concerns that Ecology’s reasoning could threaten any plans to repair the Monroe Street Bridge or rebuild Post Street Bridge. But Grover said such worries are unwarranted.

“The issue we have with this particular (bridge) design is that it goes right over the falls,” Grover said. “I have a hard time imagining this issue coming up with another bridge design.”

Council members went behind closed doors on Monday to discuss their three options: Withdraw the permit application and walk away from the project; appeal to the state shorelines hearings board, which is appointed by the governor; or change the city’s shoreline master plan, which could take several years.

At the time, City Attorney Jim Sloane said the closed meeting was justified under the Washington Open Meetings Act because “pending litigation” would be discussed.

During the executive session, several council members decided the public should know what was being discussed. They asked Pupo to report on the three options when they returned to an open session.

Greene said she felt uncomfortable when the closed-door talk ventured beyond possible litigation to the city’s options. She then asked that the information be discussed in public.

Rodgers, too, said she felt uncomfortable. “It wasn’t an executive session topic,” she said.

Sloane elaborated on the “pending litigation” Tuesday. If the city appeals the shoreline ruling and loses, it could sue Ecology, he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo