Lower Sacramento River at Cypress Bridge Remains Open… For Now

Last week the Redding City Council was heading towards closing the Lower Sacramento River to boats around their wholly mis-managed Cypress Street bridge repair project.

This week, they backed off. From the Redding Record Searchlight:

The Redding City Council backed off from closing the Sacramento River to boaters at the Cypress Avenue Bridge after a half-dozen guides urged officials to consider alternatives that would not cripple the city’s robust fishing industry.

The project engineers sank several temporary piers into the river, creating many small channels under the bridge which are at an angle to the river’s current, so getting through the slots is not as simple as lining up the boats and shipping the oars.

According to local guide Craig Nielsen — who floats the river on a regular basis — the problem isn’t too severe at low flows, but at the higher flows of summer, it’s going to get damned dangerous, especially for less-skilled boaters.

Rather than essentially cutting the normal float trip in half until 2010, the city council voted to establish a committee to look at the options.

That’s probably a prudent course given the economic hardship lawsuits likely to flow from a closure, and the not-yet-confronted questions about the city’s right to close navigable river.

It’s always amusing to see government officials running for cover when the trouble starts, including this gem from Redding’s engineering director, who probably realized that this economy-killing, lawsuit-generating furball was going to land on his desk.

Figuring that distracting us with shadow puppets wouldn’t work, Barru Tippin fired up the "I am the great and powerful Oz" routine:

Several speakers said a design flaw in the trestle created the danger. But Barry Tippin, the city’s transportation and engineering director, defended the structure, noting it was designed by an internationally recognized engineering firm and built to accepted state standards.

Ah yes. An "internationally recognized" firm created this apparently "internationally sized screwup."

See you breathing water under the Cypress Street Bridge, Tom Chandler