Bummer: Climate Doom, Environmental Justice Removed From Portland Area Bridge Plans

It took them 21 months to build the huge St. John’s Bridge in Portland, starting in 1929. These days it takes longer than that just to figure out what kinds of dumb crap they’re going to consider

Climate change, environmental justice sections removed from Interstate Bridge project final analysis

The arrival of a new presidential administration in 2025 prompted significant changes to the federal environmental review process for the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project, including abandoning or downplaying much of the review’s climate change and environmental justice impact analysis, according to a final version of the project’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released last week.

The Environmental Impact Statement is the culmination of the federal review process for infrastructure megaprojects, providing a comprehensive analysis of how a project will affect the surrounding environment and community. It is typically produced in conjunction with agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration, and its release is one of the last steps for a project to win final federal approval.

I’m fine with environmental reviews when they make sense and are realistic, but, they tend to be the very definition of turning the amp up to 11 in practice.

The final IBR document comes in at 944 pages, excluding appendices, making it 16 pages shorter than the draft version released in 2024. The final version is fairly similar to the draft, with some sections expanded and most largely unchanged — but while the climate change and environmental justice chapters totaled over 70 pages in the draft, the final version reduces them to a single paragraph each.

Those paragraphs explain that a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in January 2025 and a subsequent memo from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directed the federal government to stop considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate analysis in the federal review process.

Good. None of that is necessary, especially the unhinged, political “environmental justice” garbage.

Some of the replacement paragraphs reference a new document called the State Environmental Policy Addendum, which is intended to satisfy the requirements for climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice analyses under Washington and Oregon state law — though it adds that the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transportation Administration “were not involved in the development of the SEPA Addendum” and “did not consider the document in the Final SEIS.”

None of this is necessary to build a bridge. Of course, with or without the crap it will probably take a decade to build the bridge, especially in deep Dem Portland. The lawsuits will surely fly the minute the plan is approved. And when construction is about to start.