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Port Huron: MDOT, officials plan closed-door session on plaza




By MIKE CONNELL, Port Huron Times Herald


Created: 2/26/2007 12:37:29 PM
Updated: 2/26/2007 12:38:38 PM


Meeting seeks to air more ideas about what to do

Port Huron - Ed Forrest thinks a half-billion dollars is a lot of money for a parking lot, especially if it divides a city in two and subjects thousands of people to diesel fumes and other health hazards.

He has an alternative idea: Build a truck stop in Ontario.

Forrest's idea may or may not be feasible, but officials with the Michigan Department of Transportation insist they are ready to listen. They have announced efforts to make the agency more accessible and receptive to local residents amid controversy surrounding plans to expand the customs plaza at the Blue Water Bridge.

"We're concerned about the residents. We are sensitive to being accessible to them," said Bill Shreck, MDOT's director of communications.
Outreach efforts are in the news today as MDOT's director, Kirk Steudel, plans a visit to Port Huron to meet with city officials and Acheson Ventures executives. The meeting was arranged by state Sen. Jud Gilbert, R-Algonac, who became chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee last month. It is closed to the public.

Forrest's ideas are reflective of those being offered by Port Huron area residents, who often know the bridge - and the traffic hassles and security concerns associated with it - as well as the best-informed officials in Lansing or Washington.

He said the plaza is being expanded to accommodate the inspections of commercial trucks, which now back up onto the bridge and Highway 402 in Ontario.

"They're building a parking lot," he said of MDOT's plan to more than quadruple the size of the existing plaza. "In essence, that is all they're doing."

His solution: Build an official truck stop somewhere on Highway 402 east of Sarnia and require commercial trucks carrying Canadian exports to check in before crossing the bridge.

"Give them a number and send them 20 at a time for final inspection rather than stringing them out across the bridge," said Forrest, who lives on North River Road in Fort Gratiot. "Build a restaurant where the truckers can grab a meal or a shower. Make their lives a little easier while you're at it."

Forrest has other ideas, too, including suggestions for redesigning the existing plaza and for building a western bypass into the Thumb to relieve traffic on Pine Grove Avenue.


Put it in writing
Port Huron's city engineer, Robert Clegg, urged residents such as Forrest to put their ideas in writing and submit them to MDOT. By doing so, the letters become part of the environmental-impact study and the concerns they raise must be addressed in some form. Clegg also suggested residents send copies of their letters to elected officials.
Shreck indicated MDOT is ready and eager to hear all points of view.

In a letter to the Times Herald, he said the agency would:


Make its staff, including project coordinators Matt Webb and Paul McAllister, available to the public on a regular schedule. Starting Friday, residents can meet with MDOT staff from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the first and third Fridays of the month. The agency's Port Huron Transportation Service Center is located at 2127 11th Ave.

Continue its toll-free project hotline number (800-955-3515). The number is available during regular business hours (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and after hours with an answering machine. Residents can call the hotline to make an appointment at the Port Huron office. Walk-ins also are welcome.

Create an e-mail list to share the latest news about the plaza. MDOT hopes to post more details about the list on its Web site later this week.

Schedule a series of public meetings on both the plaza expansion and planned improvements to the Interstate 69/94 corridor, including a nine-lane bridge over the Black River and a pedestrian/cyclist bridge connecting the Port Huron Township Park and the boat-launching ramp off Riverside Drive in Port Huron.
Shreck said MDOT has had eight public meetings as well as 14 meetings of a local advisory committee.


'They're grandstanding'
Dick Reynolds, director of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and a member of the advisory committee, said he believes the agency has been open with the public all along. In fact, he expressed dismay about the reaction of Port Huron officials who accuse MDOT of misleading them about the plaza timetable.
"I'm surprised they're surprised," he said of city officials. "I think they're grandstanding. They were all part of the meetings."

Reynolds, whose great-grandfather was Port Huron's fire chief, echoed U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, when he said city leaders should be talking to other border towns about how to turn international trade into an economic bonanza.

"No one should have been surprised that this is happening," he said. "When the decision to expand Interstate 69 to Mexico was announced, you knew something was coming. It was only a matter of when."

I-69 now runs between Port Huron and Indianapolis. It is being extended to the Mexican border via Memphis and Houston, creating the so-called NAFTA Superhighway that will link Montreal and Toronto with Mexico City.


Common sense lacking
Larry Babin, a resident of Riverside Drive in Port Huron, called on MDOT to exercise more common sense.
"Common sense makes me ask: 'Why would anyone in their right mind spend a half-billion dollars and take four or five years to tear up and divide a city for a truck plaza when a half-mile down the road there is a huge parcel of land already developed with new buildings, parking and access roads already in place on a restricted highway?'" Babin said, referring to the new MDOT facility off Interstate 69/94.

He also asked, "If security is really the issue, common sense makes me ask: Why would you inspect shipments after they cross the bridge instead of before? Disrupting or destroying the bridge is as big a security issue as any terrorist or contraband. Imagine the damage to our economy if the bridge were destroyed. Imagine the damage if a truck full of toxins were dumped into the river a half-mile from our city water-supply intake."


Invite leaders to town
Luther Kleckner, a retired college instructor who lives in the Colonial Woods section of Port Huron, said it is important to invite influential policymakers such as Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary, to tour the city and its border crossing.
"You can only hope they come away with a better understanding of the city's concerns," he said. "And if they don't, that needs to be on the record, too."

Dave Teeple, owner of the Port Huron Music Center and secretary of the Bridge Plaza Business and Community Coalition, said it's critical to let people elsewhere know just how dramatically Port Huron will be affected if the plaza is expanded inside the city limits.

"From the air we breathe to the taxes the city collects, it is going to impact everything in this community," he said.

Alice O'Neil, the retired chief executive officer of two California corporations, has taken up the plaza as a personal crusade. She has spoken on the phone with officials at the Chicago office of the Environmental Protection Agency as well as to Todd Davis of the Wilbur Smith consulting firm, which has the contract with MDOT to write the environmental impact study.

She predicted the EPA may become the last line of defense for Port Huron residents worried about health risks. She also said Davis "quite vehemently denies the (inspection) booths on the bridge are not being staffed," a point many regular bridge users might dispute.


At the dinner table
Vickie Ledsworth, president of the Greater Port Huron Area Chamber of Commerce, said the group rescinded its earlier support for the plaza design because it believes MDOT provided misleading information.
"They would tell us, 'This is the footprint, but it could be smaller,'" she said last week at a meeting of the community coalition. "In fact, they're buying property outside the footprint."

At the same meeting, retired engineer Ed Dost, who moved to the city 42 years ago to take a job with Acheson Colloids, talked of the importance of applying practical solutions to complex problems.

"My conclusion is to build the plaza west of the Black River," he said to applause.

Laughter greeted a comment from former restaurateur Tom Manis, who nodded to a map of "Plaza Alternative 4," the design most likely to be implemented, and quipped: "At the dinner table, my family did a better job than these guys did."


Mike Connell is a reporter and columnist for the Times Herald. He can be reached at (810) 989-6259 or mconnell@gannett.com.




Web Editor: John Bumgardner, Assignment Desk


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