The Palm Beach Post
Editorial
October 31, 2001

Bridge critics were right

Consulting firm drops
Walton Road lawsuit

Figg Bridge Engineers, the consulting firm on a proposed Walton Road toll bridge to Hutchinson Island, last week dropped a slander suit against four St. Lucie County men who had criticized the project. The critics said the firm was the target of a federal investigation into alleged illegal dumping at the Garcon Point Bridge near Pensacola that Figg designed.
Turns out that Charles Grande, Edward McKay, Roger Sharp and Kevin Stinnette were correct. They and their attorney, Robert Rivas, deserve the community's praise for fighting a lawsuit the defendants described accurately from the start as a "strategic lawsuit against public participation" intended to stop criticism of the Walton Road project. Corporations file such suits to silence critics. Unfortunately, the tactic often is successful. Citizens fear ruinous legal costs, so the suits have a chilling effect on public debate. This case shows how important it can be when citizens fight back.
Figg, one of the state's most prominent engineering firms, had insisted that the company never was investigated. But a Justice Department official told Figg officials this month that the company was the subject of a crlminal investigation as early as April 1999. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection also said in an Oct. 2 deposition that Figg was under investigation.
State and federal officials were investigating whether dumping the construction debris into the water during construction of the Garcon Point Bridge violated the Clean Water Act. Odebrecht-Metric, the firm that built the bridge, paid $4.1 million in fines and investigation costs, and several company officials pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act. Construction workers said Figg's inspectors witnessed the dumping but did nothing about it.
The Walton Road bridge to Hutchinson Island, which the four St. Lucie County residents had criticized as unneeded, environmentally risky and financially unsound, is dead for now. State Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, diverted a $20 million appropriation earmarked for Walton Road to another bridge project after Gov. Bush vetoed a $1.4 million bailout of the Garcon Point Bridge, where toll traffic is too low to pay expenses. Critics had predicted that result, too.
The legal outcome is one more indication that the St. Lucie County Expressway and Bridge Authority, which has blindly supported the Walton Road span, no longer has a reason to exist. The lawsuit is gone. The authority should be the next to go.