By Jim Reeder, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 10, 2001

PORT ST. LUCIE -- Members of the St. Lucie County Expressway & Bridge Authority finally acknowledged Friday there's no money to build a bridge to South Hutchinson Island.

They suspended operations and will ask the state Department of Transportation to help them close the books on nine years of discussion about a toll bridge to connect Port St. Lucie with the island.

"We've got conceptual ideas but no positive funding source," Chairman Rudy Howard said. "If there are reports out there that are nearly completed, we should complete them because of the money invested."

But other board members said that could be a waste of money because the reports will be out of date when the bridge idea is revived.

"We should ask the DOT if they want the studies completed," County Commissioner Paula Lewis said. "I'm not comfortable spending any more money."

Board members said Howard should ask the DOT whether the state wants to pay for completion of a corridor study, which is about 97 percent complete.

The board has operated since 1983 with loans from the state's Toll Facilities Revolving Trust Fund and other state grants. A $5.3 million loan must be repaid even if no bridge is built.

It's unclear how the authority could repay that loan with no revenue except from the state.

Its first project, the Palmer Expressway, was found to be unnecessary.

Several agencies criticized proponents' claims that the bridge was needed for emergency evacuation in a hurricane or nuclear plant disaster.

State Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, decided in July to shift $20 million from the proposed toll bridge to Port St. Lucie's West Virginia Drive project to create a new east-west corridor.

That effectively killed the toll-bridge project for the foreseeable future.

Port St. Lucie Councilman Jack Kelly, a proponent of the toll bridge, said he's disappointed that nothing has been accomplished during his year on the authority.

"All I've ever seen are overviews of studies Figg Engineers says it has done," Kelly said. "I've never seen the $28,000 sea-grass study. How do we verify the work has actually been done?"

The board's attorney, Dan Harrell, said DOT officials review those reports to see if they are adequate.

"I don't really have a good answer for you," Harrell said. "The studies should be delivered to you and put in one place."

The Expressway Authority's recent years have been marked by personal attacks and lawsuits.

Port St. Lucie Councilman Jim Anderson Friday compared four vocal opponents of the project to the "Chinese gang of four," Communist Party officials that were imprisoned for life during political struggles in that country.

"I was invited to participate in what I thought was a democratic process," said Roger Sharp, one of the four and an Indian River Drive resident. "I deeply resent any implication that I have any connection to anyone in a Red Chinese Communist regime."

Figg Engineers, the authority's consultant, claimed in a lawsuit that the four slandered the company while opposing the bridge.

That suit was dropped recently after a sworn statement showed Figg had been under investigation in connection with the Garcon Point Bridge project in Florida's Panhandle.

Figg designed the Garcon Point Bridge, whose builder later pleaded guilty to illegally dumping debris in the water. Figg was not charged in that case.

But the company that built the bridge, Odebrect-Metric Inc., was fined $4 million for illegally dumping construction debris into the water.

jim_reeder@pbpost.com