A four-hour hearing Wednesday night finally got the "bridge to nowhere" somewhere, as the Senate Committee on Planning and Environmental Protection heard testimony from the public and from officials of the departments of Public Works and Planning and Natural Resources.
At an August hearing, DPW was a no-show. Senators then voted to subpoena Wayne Callwood, acting DPW commissioner, to appear at the next hearing.
Callwood declared the Nadir project a "top priority" of his department, an assertion which committee Chairman Adlah "Foncie" Donastorg took issue with.
Donastorg said progress on the Nadir project has been "unacceptable." He noted it is hurricane season and the gut hasn't even been cleaned, let alone work done on the bridge itself.
Callwood and DPNR officials swapped blame and cited a litany of bureaucratic delays that have held up the project and the permit process. Also, land must be acquired in the area for work to continue.
Aloy Nielsen, PWD director of highway engineering, noted the bridge was built before the necessary rights-of-way were obtained, the reverse of the usual process. He said the government still needs to purchase land to connect roads to the bridge.
So far the federally funded Nadir project has cost $2.3 million, and new work, including a channel and culvert to reduce area flooding, will run more than $8 million, officials said. Some of that will be covered by the Army Corps of Engineers, but the government must come up with about half the funds.
Donastorg said he would call for a federal audit of spending on the project. Calling the beleaguered bridge an "atrocity," Donastorg demanded that DPW get together with DPNR and get the proper permits to start a clean up and widening of the mouth of the gut, if nothing else, in the next two weeks.
Testifiers presented several ideas, including using prisoners to clean the gut. Sen. Donald "Ducks" Cole and Donastorg jumped on that as an excellent idea,
but Callwood said he couldn't allow prisoners to do that kind of work, saying a grove of pineapples, or pond-apples, could be destroyed in the process.
"Pineapples are more important than residents, than people?" Cole asked.