The historic U.S. 79 bridge over the White River at Clarendon has a chance to be saved after all, the city's mayor said Wednesday.
RELATED ARTICLE
http://www.arkansas…">Court ruling spells doom for old Arkansas bridge
"It's still a long shot," Mayor James Stinson III said.
But Stinson said he was heartened by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department's decision to withdraw a project to demolish and remove the 85-year-old bridge from Wednesday's bid letting.
That move allows bridge supporters to proceed with a lawsuit to halt the project without requiring them to come up with a $120,000 bond, Stinson said.
The city and the nonprofit Friends of the Historic White River Bridge at Clarendon sued the department last week in an attempt to stop the project to demolish the bridge. A federal judge on Monday denied a temporary restraining order, but Stinson said the lawsuit will proceed to a full hearing on the merits.
The bridge is being replaced by a new bridge scheduled to open by the end of the summer. The new bridge and its approaches cost about $100 million.
Supporters say the old bridge and its approaches can be the centerpiece of a plan to boost ecotourism in the impoverished Delta region by converting it into what they say will be the longest pedestrian and bicycle bridge in the world.
The effort to save the bridge has drawn support from the Department of Arkansas Heritage and Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who met with top U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials on a visit to Washington.
For the plan to work, the western approaches of the bridge must be kept. They go over part of the environmentally sensitive Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was established in 1986 to protect significant wetland habitats that provide feeding and resting areas for migrating waterfowl.
The wildlife refuge covers about 56,000 acres in Jackson, Woodruff, Monroe and Prairie counties and is one of the few remaining areas in the Lower Mississippi River Valley unaltered by significant channelization and drainage, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.
To build the new bridge, the Highway Department had to reach an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to mitigate the damage the new bridge would inflict on the refuge. Under the agreement, the federal agency required the removal of the western approaches, although the actual river span over the White could stay.
But the lawsuit said the environmental issues on which the 2007 agreement was based have changed, and federal law requires those changes to be assessed in a new environmental review.
"Under the law, new changes in the environment require further investigation," Stinson said. "Changes like the presence of endangered species and significant change in flood flows have not been addressed.
"Additionally, the Arkansas Highway Department wholly ignored bicycle transportation in deciding to demolish the bridge, although it is required by law to consider this increasingly important subject," the mayor said.
Bridge supporters are organizing a meeting for Monday night at Gene's BBQ & Family Restaurant in Brinkley to try to raise more money to pay for legal fees associated with the lawsuit, Stinson said.
"The Historic Clarendon Bridge is very much alive," he said. "We intend to pursue our goal of using it for economic development of tourism in the Delta."
Metro on 06/23/2016