Today is a day to reflect on $30 million the state of Oregon no longer has. Yesterday afternoon, the governor rubberstamped $30 million taxpayer dollars for continued planning of the Columbia River Crossing (CRC), funding which several legislators protested setting aside for the big bridge as they slashed budgets for social services, education and just about everything else.

In an absurd, Orwellian turn of events, the CRC received another feather in its $4.2 billion cap today: an environmental excellence award! The National Association of Environmental Professionals crowned the 12-lane bridge a "A Model for Collaboration and Environmental Stewardship" for its greenhouse gas and climate change evaluation.

Oh, you mean the greenhouse gas and climate change evaluation that the Environmental Protection Agency found "failed to adequately examine the potential for a bridge to induce sprawl, increase pollution and contaminate an aquifer that supplies Vancouver and Clark County's drinking water." The one that green advocacy group Coalition for a Livable Future tears apart, arguing that CRC planners' analysis that the bridge will decrease greenhouse gases is wrong?

Local consultant and economist Joe Cortright explains (at more length here) that the CRC's greenhouse gas and climate change analysis relies on a faulty baseline. "They made this assumption that there will be tens of thousands of more people in Clark County whether they build the bridge or not, and that all those people will get in their cars and drive across the bridge." But really, says Cortright, the bridge itself will help create more sprawl and lead to more people commuting over the river in cars. "The effect of the bridge will be more people driving longer distances," he concludes.