Bridge location foes announce lawsuit

The grass-roots group Friends of Magurrewock plans to file a lawsuit in federal court today against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop construction of a $120 million international bridge in neighboring Calais.

The group maintains that the Calais site is environmentally destructive and “inferior” to a site in Baileyville. The Baileyville site was first proposed early in the project, but later rejected by state and federal officials in favor of the Calais site.

The bridge, expected to be completed in 2008, would connect Calais with neighboring St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

For four years the Friends group has battled state and federal agencies to force them to build the bridge in Baileyville. The group maintains that the Calais site would have a negative impact on Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge. Traffic from the bridge would pass through the refuge on Route 1 on its way to Route 9. Traffic already passes through the refuge from the city’s other two bridges – the downtown Ferry Point Bridge and the Milltown Bridge, near the city’s industrial park.

“The proposed third crossing is the first segment of the East/West Highway from Calais to Watertown, N.Y.,” the group said in a prepared release Tuesday. “As such, the Army Corps of Engineers is required to assess not only the narrow environmental impact of the bridge and the new roads through Calais, but at the very least, the impact that will be felt in the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, in close proximity to the project.”

The Friends said that the corps was aware that eventually the road through the refuge would have to be widened from two to four lanes to accommodate increased traffic. The corps also was aware, the Friends said, that building the bridge in Baileyville would eliminate the need to widen Route 1.

“The Maine Department of Transportation’s contention that there will be no increased traffic through the refuge is simply ludicrous,” Lynne Williams, the attorney for the Friends group, said in the release. “The East/West Highway is high on their agenda and the whole point of that project is to increase traffic through Maine, justified by a questionable correlation with economic development. The corps simply bought the Maine DOT’s fallacious arguments hook, line and sinker.”

But for years now, refuge personnel have not signed onto the Friends’ battle even at the federal level. Williams said the local manager was a civil servant and would not comment on another federal agency. Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – the agency that has oversight of the refuge – did not weigh in on the issue, Williams said the Environmental Protection Agency did so in a 2006 letter. The EPA expressed concerns about traffic issues, she said.

Williams said she believes the DOT is the “villain” in the project. “We legally have to sue the corps because they granted the permit, but I find the DOT to not have given all the information, to not have been upfront and to be actually duplicitous in this whole thing,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

DOT officials Tuesday said they do not comment on lawsuits.

The lawsuit to be filed in Federal District Court in Bangor today asks the court to order the corps to rescind the permit it issued in September until a full environmental impact statement is prepared.

“The National Environmental Protection Act demands this assessment and it is unfortunate that we now need to go to court to demand enforcement of this law,” Williams added in the release.

Asked what happens if the group stops construction in Calais and Canada refuses to build the bridge, Williams said, “in internationals relations here, we have strategic negotiations.”

Jonathan Carter, director of Forest Ecology Network, is expected to join Williams and Friends president William Szirbik at a press conference at 11 a.m. today at the Federal Building in conjunction with the lawsuit being filed.