When Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi ran for office about a year ago he heard one question over and over again: Do you want to build the Indian Street Bridge?

Ciampi, a supporter of the proposed bridge, always said yes, but with a mental shrug.

“I kind of felt, ‘Why are we talking about this? It’s never going to happen,’ ” he said.

That changed this year when a state legislative commission earmarked it for $128 million in federal stimulus dollars and the White House later reviewed the project and said it could move forward with the stimulus money. Now the construction of what some have called Florida’s Bridge to Nowhere seems imminent.

What does this mean for Martin County?

The answer, in classic Martin County fashion, depends on your stance on growth. That’s because the county is a community often polarized by questions of development, and perhaps no other road project has been as divisive as the Indian Street Bridge.

The bridge, which would provide a second span across the South Fork of the St. Lucie River between Palm City and Stuart, has been planned for decades. And it has been argued about for just as long.

Supporters of the project, which include four of five county commissioners, say the second bridge will alleviate traffic congestion in and out of Palm City, provide faster access to Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, and ease economic pain in the region by creating more than 3,500 jobs during its estimated three-year construction.

“It’s going to go from digging in the dirt to engineers and lawyers,” Ciampi said of the potential job creation. “It’s a great thing.”

Opponents, see the bridge, a proposed 5-mile span that would be just about a mile south of the existing Palm City Bridge, as a potential hazard to the environment and a window to further growth and development that would eventually nullify any benefit to traffic, put more cars on roads near schools in western Martin County and perhaps forever alter the rural landscape.

“We’ve always felt it would open up the west to development,” said Donna Melzer, a former Martin County commissioner and longtime opponent of the bridge. “We keep thinking we have a chance to avoid being like Broward, but it’s decisions like this that make a difference.”

The only remaining barrier might be a federal lawsuit filed by Palm City resident Odias Smith in April 2007 on the grounds that it would damage the surrounding environment.

Florida’s Joint Legislative Budget Commission picked the Indian Street Bridge in April to receive more stimulus money than any other project in the state.

Subsequent reports by CNN and Fox News that featured local critics such as Smith brought the Martin County bridge to national attention. Then U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., included it on a list of projects that he alleged were wasteful, saying it wasn’t “shovel-ready” as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

A White House review done in response to Coburn’s claims found otherwise in June. The White House determined that the project met all necessary federal-aid requirements to be considered shovel-ready as well as the spirit of the Recovery Act that it be an infrastructure improvement and create jobs.

Even opponents acknowledge that the bridge is likely to go forward now that one of its main obstacles, financing, has been dealt with.

The bridge is estimated to cost about $200 million, including the purchase of land right-of-way; construction costs are closer to $125 million, said Terry Rauth, deputy county engineer.

Construction is expected to begin in January, Rauth said. Road right-of-way will be acquired as construction progresses, with all of it expected to be acquired by 2011, she said

The county has received proposals from three firms and will open the bids Friday.

“A lot of people are already put to work on this bridge,” Rauth said.

Tags: Indian Street Bridge, Martin Memorial Medical Center, St. Lucie River

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 10:26 pm and is filed under Martin County, Palm City, Stuart. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.