The Week Observed: October 3, 2025

What City Observatory Did This Week

A bridge too low, again. Just as a decade ago, the Oregon and Washington highway departments are trying to build a bridge across the Columbia River that is too low, likely wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly dooming a major infrastructure project. The fact is: You can’t build a bridge across a navigable waterway in the United States without a permit from the US Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard has always been clear that it wants a 178 foot clearance over the Columbia River for any new crossing. With any shorter proposal, IBR is legally “proceeding at its own risk.”

The Interstate Bridge Replacement Project has always believed it could bully the Coast Guard into approving a much lower fixed span, and its combination of arrogance and hubris, have delayed, and once again threaten to kill this project.

The IBR is years behind schedule with its environmental review and has as yet failed to submit a new navigation impact report which it needs to trigger a Coast Guard reconsideration of the navigation requirements.

The IBR project schedule says it will take more than 16 months from the filing of a new navigation impact report until they receive a bridge permit, which would push the project start well in to 2027. By then, key federal grants, worth more than $2 billion, could expire, dooming the project.

Must Read

Jon Talton on the importance of urban density to economic success. Writing in the Seattle Times, Talton explains how the economy of cities benefits from the concentrations of talent in place. He quotes Richard Florida as saying “Density matters” as a positive economic and cultural advantage, “certain places stand out as the best magnets for talent. … Some people may not live in these big cities, these dominant centers, but even with digital technology, they have to come back there occasionally.” He also cites Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “density is absolutely essential to economic success, urban vitality and such sources of dynamism as regional industry clusters and tech ecosystems.”

In the News

Clark County Today republished our commentary on the growing likelihood that the Trump Administration will pull the plug on $2.1 billion in federal grants for the Interstate Bridge Replacement Project.