Saturday, May 01, 2021 8:04:36 PM
Bison roaming a bridge over the Mississippi River? ‘Crazy’ idea for national park near Quad Cities gains momentum
By BILL RUTHHART
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
APR 30, 2021 AT 5:07 PM
Plan: Bison Bridge park over Mississippi River
A plan is gaining momentum to turn the current I-80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind …
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-bison-bridge-mississippi-river-quad-cities-20210429-6zt3k6m7w5bzpg5bziqyfiucue-story.html
An artist's rendering shows a plan to turn the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind national park. The Bison Bridge would take the current bridge connecting Iowa to Illinois, and transform it into grazing habitat for bison with 50 acres in each state. The westbound lanes would be home to the bison and the eastbound lanes would be a linear park where visitors could view them up close over the river. (Streamline Architects)
Environmentalist Chad Pregracke sees something else: the future centerpiece of a 100-acre national park where bison would roam between Illinois and Iowa along the world’s largest man-made wildlife crossing, putting the Quad-Cities region on the map of major tourist attractions.
Dubbed the Bison Bridge, the project is driven by the fact that Iowa and Illinois transportation officials have declared the current I-80 bridge obsolete and in likely need of replacement. Instead of spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money to tear down the 55-year-old bridge, Pregracke wants to raise private funds to preserve and transform it.
The bridge’s westbound lanes would turn into grassy grounds for bison while the eastbound lanes would feature a pedestrian and bike path offering an up-close view of the large land mammals that are estimated to have once numbered 60 million in North America. Swaths of prairie land would connect to the base of the bridge on each side of the river.
Pregracke recently launched the idea publicly after two years of consulting with experts and quietly pitching the concept to state officials, politicians and local business leaders. He started many of those conversations with a disclaimer: “I know this sounds crazy, but …”
So far, no one has told him ‘No’ — including the Illinois Department of Transportation, which controls the bridge’s fate.
“It is an outside-the-box idea, and some people would say it’s crazy,” Pregracke said. “But if it were anything but that, would people really stop here to see it? It has to have some level of crazy for someone to say, ‘I have to see that for myself.’ ”
The Bison Bridge has its share of influential boosters.
The local congresswoman, chamber of commerce, visitors bureau and scores of business leaders are embracing the idea as having just the type of unconventional creativity that could help the Quad Cities gain notoriety beyond its common reputation as the home of John Deere, a PGA golf tournament and the Rock Island Arsenal, the nation’s largest government-owned weapons manufacturer.
Contributing to the groundswell of support is the fact that Pregracke unveiled a thorough plan backed by an experienced team.
John Deere helped develop conceptual renderings. Two top former IDOT officials are closely involved and helped design the plan. And Pregracke himself has a track record of tackling big projects with the support of major corporate and philanthropic donors.
Through his Living Lands and Waters nonprofit, the 46-year-old East Moline native has gained national acclaim for his decades of living aboard a barge cleaning up the Mississippi and other rivers around the country, removing some 11 million pounds of trash, planting nearly 1.5 million trees, working with 117,000 volunteers and educating more than 11,000 students aboard a floating classroom. He won the nation’s Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2002 and was named CNN’s Hero of the Year in 2013.
“You can be a big thinker and come up with an idea and not get very far. What I appreciate about Chad Pregracke is he’s a big thinker and a big doer. He’s proven it,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, an early supporter of the project whose western Illinois district includes the bridge.
“With his personality and perseverance, Chad’s got the wherewithal to make this happen.”
‘Not just pie-in-the-sky’
The Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge that carries I-80 over the Mississippi opened in 1966 and was later named for a local Iowa Republican congressman who was instrumental in backing the Interstate Highway Act. Each day, roughly 42,000 cars drive over the more than half-mile bridge, which connects Rapids City, a small Illinois town of about 1,000 people, and LeClaire, a quaint city of about 4,000 in Iowa.
On the Illinois side of the bridge, the state owns roughly 62 acres of land that runs up a bluff with sweeping views of the river, including a welcome center rest stop with a scenic overlook. The area that encompasses the current interchanges and land surrounding the bridge would bring that total to about 100 acres.
Pregracke grew up a few houses away along the river, with the I-80 bridge visible from his parent’s backyard dock. He said he’s long thought the Illinois land and rest stop has been under utilized and first thought of placing bison there 20 years ago after visiting the Buffalo Herd Overlook along Interstate 70 near Denver.
After a tornado ripped through the Illinois interchange near the bridge in 2016, Pregracke received IDOT’s permission to clean up hundreds of downed trees and remove invasive species while restoring the area to its native prairie. His organization spent roughly $150,000 on the project.
Pregracke said when he learned two years ago that a new I-80 bridge likely was in the works, the idea of putting bison on the old one just came to him. He envisioned a concept similar to the wildlife overpasses he saw in Banff, Canada, during a snowboarding trip.
“When you look at the I-80 bridge, it isn’t some giant monstrosity like a lot of the new bridges they build now. It’s more simplistic,” Pregracke said. “It just looks like a slow rolling hill in Illinois, and I just thought if you grabbed some dirt and put some grass on there, it would just fit.”
Pregracke said the idea was so unusual that he was hesitant to share it with many at first, but an early meeting with Bustos encouraged him to go for it.
“It didn’t take me long to say, ‘I think it’s a great idea,’ ” said Bustos, who announced Friday she won’t seek re-election to a sixth term next year. “I said we ought to look at making this a national park.”
Bustos said a national park would offer the opportunity to tell the story of not just the prairie and bison, but the region’s rich Native American history. Sauk leaders Black Hawk and Keokuk made the area their home, and the nearby Black Hawk State Historic Site in Rock Island includes some of the land where their Saukenuk village was located.
With Bustos on board, Pregracke set out to build a team of experts, including his college roommate, Matt Hughes, a consultant and lobbyist in Springfield who previously was IDOT’s chief financial officer for 10 years.
Hughes set up a 2019 meeting with IDOT’s top leaders, during which he and Pregracke said none of the officials dismissed the idea out of hand. Soon after, retiring IDOT engineer Kevin Marchek joined the Bison Bridge team as project manager.
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“When I saw how well thought out the plan was, I realized this is not just pie-in-the-sky, it can happen,” said Lynn Hunt, vice president of Visit Quad Cities, the region’s tourism agency.
Paul Rumler, president and CEO of the Quad Cities Chamber, said the key to driving economic development is not the old model of simply attracting jobs but making the area a “cool place that stands out” to attract young workers and families. That, he said, makes the Bison Bridge a perfect fit for the region of nearly 500,000 people.
“It’s so important to create a sense of place here that is different than every sleepy river community in the U.S.,” Rumler said. “The Quad Cities is not that sleepy river town. This will help redefine what we’re known for locally, regionally, nationally.”
With seemingly boundless energy and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Pregracke assumes the role of part cheerleader, part truth teller for the region as he pitches the Bison Bridge. During his public unveiling, he bluntly said the Quad Cities area is failing to compete with places such as Denver, Nashville, Des Moines, Iowa City and Madison, Wisconsin, where young workers are choosing to live.
“Folks, we’re not even on the map,” he said.
Pregracke wants the QC to think bigger: If St. Louis could demolish 40 city blocks to build a 630-foot tall arch, then why can’t they put a few bison on an old bridge?
“I’m not the smartest guy. I’m seriously of average intelligence, but I just think this is doable. I don’t think of it as this grand project,” he said. “I’m not building a bridge. We’re just saving what’s already there. It’s needed. It has tons of potential, the right momentum and the right timing.”
An artist's rendering shows a plan to turn the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind national park. The Bison Bridge would take the current bridge connecting Iowa to Illinois, and transform it into grazing habitat for bison with 50 acres in each state. The westbound lanes would be home to the bison and the eastbound lanes would be a linear park where visitors could view them up close over the river.
Judy Ahlers is sold. She has lived in a LeClaire home with a scenic view of the river and I-80 bridge for 53 years.
“I’m all for it. I was a little shocked about the bison at first, but I like it,” said Ahlers, 74, as she raked leaves in her front yard. “Having a pedestrian path right there where we could cross the river would be very cool.”
Ahlers said the response in her neighborhood has been mostly positive, but noted some naysayers on Facebook have raised concerns about traffic or made crude comments, such as suggesting the bison would make the area stink.
“Like that would be worse than the dead fish,” she said with a laugh.
About 20,000 visitors already frequent the Buffalo Bill Museum in downtown LeClaire each year, which is near the birthplace of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, an early American soldier, buffalo hunter and showman. A stuffed bison, various Cody artifacts and an original, wood-hulled steamboat welcome visitors.
A bison also can be found in the logo of Cody Road Coffee in LeClaire, where barista Cassandra Coopman said she loves the thought of ditching her car and walking to work from her home in Rapids City.
“I feel like it’s a great idea. It will bring a lot of tourists to the area. Who doesn’t want that?” said Coopman, 50. “It’s a kind of out-there idea, but if we can make it work, I think it would be really interesting.”
Pregracke said the most common concern he’s heard since announcing the project has centered on the bisons’ well-being, which he called encouraging. Jason Baldes, the Tribal Buffalo Program manager for the National Wildlife Federation, has signed onto the project as a bison consultant.
Baldes, who is a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe and born on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, said a herd of about 10 bison would fare well in a 100-acre park. He said introducing young bison to the area would be key as they’ll naturally adjust to their surroundings, and he predicted they would be curious enough to graze back and forth over the river.
Many of the bison in the U.S. today are raised for meat and have cattle genes and “are not even genetically pure buffalo,” Baldes said. A project such as the Bison Bridge, he said, could help add to the less than 25,000 conservation bison left in the U.S.
And like Bustos, Baldes sees an opportunity to emphasize the region’s Native American history.
“Buffalo are North America’s largest land mammal that was nearly annihilated in order to disenfranchise Native Americans,” Baldes said. “That’s important history, and we need to be able to tell and educate people about that.”
Building public support
Officials with the Iowa and Illinois departments of transportation said the existing I-80 bridge needs to be replaced. It has inadequate shoulders, needs an extra lane in each direction and in 2008 and 2009 it was closed for months at a time for major repairs.
The two states have identified funding for an estimated cost of $304.5 million, but IDOT spokesman Paul Wappel stressed that figure is “extremely preliminary.” If the project were to receive funding as part of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, that could free up money for the states to spend elsewhere, Wappel said.
As the lead agency on the project, IDOT has started a study of the area — the first step in determining the best location for a new bridge.
Pregracke publicly launched the Bison Bridge to coincide with that process and is more than halfway toward his goal of collecting 50,000 signatures in support of the project at bisonbridge.org. Marchek, the former IDOT engineer and Bison Bridge project manager, said large public support can make a difference when the time comes for IDOT to decide the fate of the old bridge and the location of the new one.
For example, he said, the new $1.2 billion I-74 bridge under construction over the Mississippi between Moline, Illinois, and Bettendorf, Iowa, had its construction timeline cut in half after public outcry.
“There’s no doubt we’re gonna be a fly in the ointment for them,” Marchek said of IDOT. “That’s sometimes the way you get things done.”
Asked about the feasibility of the Bison Bridge, the Iowa Department of Transportation deferred comment to Illinois. Wappel, the IDOT spokesman, did not specifically comment on the plan’s prospects only to say ideas from all stakeholders would be considered in the design process.
If IDOT determines the most feasible option is simply to build a new bridge where the current one stands, then Marchek said it’s “game over.”
Representatives for Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for newly-elected Iowa U.S. Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks, whose district includes the bridge, said the Republican has had initial discussions about the Bison Bridge and looks forward to having more.
Hughes said state lawmakers and mayors on both sides of the river have been supportive. He also noted the project would save taxpayers the expense of tearing down the bridge, which IDOT estimates would cost between $3 million and $6 million.
Pregracke and his team have been hesitant to put an initial price tag on the Bison Bridge plan, which calls for a visitors center built into the bridge.
Through his Living Lands and Waters nonprofit, Pregracke operates a nearly $2 million annual budget with yearly contributions from a number of major companies, including ADM, Arconic, Anheuser-Busch, Cargill, Caterpillar, Honda and John Deere among others. He predicted raising funds would not be an issue, and that much of the money would come from outside of the Quad Cities for such an “iconic Midwest” project along one of the nation’s most-traveled highways.
For her part, Bustos said she’s already discussed the Bison Bridge with a White House liaison, new Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member in U.S. history, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The former South Bend mayor and presidential candidate was asked about the project by a Quad-Cities television anchor during a round of local interviews to tout Biden’s infrastructure package. A puzzled Buttigieg seemed to think the project was designed to solve a problem with vehicles hitting bison in the Quad Cities.
“Animal strikes are a safety issue, and I’d be interested to learn more about the concept,” Buttigieg said.
After hearing about the interview, an amused Bustos had her own text conversation with Buttigieg, sending him information about the project.
“He said, ‘Such an interesting idea. Look forward to following it.’ I’ll translate that as a thumbs-up,” Bustos said. “So, he is aware of it now.”
By BILL RUTHHART
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
APR 30, 2021 AT 5:07 PM
Plan: Bison Bridge park over Mississippi River
A plan is gaining momentum to turn the current I-80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind …
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-bison-bridge-mississippi-river-quad-cities-20210429-6zt3k6m7w5bzpg5bziqyfiucue-story.html
An artist's rendering shows a plan to turn the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind national park. The Bison Bridge would take the current bridge connecting Iowa to Illinois, and transform it into grazing habitat for bison with 50 acres in each state. The westbound lanes would be home to the bison and the eastbound lanes would be a linear park where visitors could view them up close over the river. (Streamline Architects)
Environmentalist Chad Pregracke sees something else: the future centerpiece of a 100-acre national park where bison would roam between Illinois and Iowa along the world’s largest man-made wildlife crossing, putting the Quad-Cities region on the map of major tourist attractions.
Dubbed the Bison Bridge, the project is driven by the fact that Iowa and Illinois transportation officials have declared the current I-80 bridge obsolete and in likely need of replacement. Instead of spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money to tear down the 55-year-old bridge, Pregracke wants to raise private funds to preserve and transform it.
The bridge’s westbound lanes would turn into grassy grounds for bison while the eastbound lanes would feature a pedestrian and bike path offering an up-close view of the large land mammals that are estimated to have once numbered 60 million in North America. Swaths of prairie land would connect to the base of the bridge on each side of the river.
Pregracke recently launched the idea publicly after two years of consulting with experts and quietly pitching the concept to state officials, politicians and local business leaders. He started many of those conversations with a disclaimer: “I know this sounds crazy, but …”
So far, no one has told him ‘No’ — including the Illinois Department of Transportation, which controls the bridge’s fate.
“It is an outside-the-box idea, and some people would say it’s crazy,” Pregracke said. “But if it were anything but that, would people really stop here to see it? It has to have some level of crazy for someone to say, ‘I have to see that for myself.’ ”
The Bison Bridge has its share of influential boosters.
The local congresswoman, chamber of commerce, visitors bureau and scores of business leaders are embracing the idea as having just the type of unconventional creativity that could help the Quad Cities gain notoriety beyond its common reputation as the home of John Deere, a PGA golf tournament and the Rock Island Arsenal, the nation’s largest government-owned weapons manufacturer.
Contributing to the groundswell of support is the fact that Pregracke unveiled a thorough plan backed by an experienced team.
John Deere helped develop conceptual renderings. Two top former IDOT officials are closely involved and helped design the plan. And Pregracke himself has a track record of tackling big projects with the support of major corporate and philanthropic donors.
Through his Living Lands and Waters nonprofit, the 46-year-old East Moline native has gained national acclaim for his decades of living aboard a barge cleaning up the Mississippi and other rivers around the country, removing some 11 million pounds of trash, planting nearly 1.5 million trees, working with 117,000 volunteers and educating more than 11,000 students aboard a floating classroom. He won the nation’s Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2002 and was named CNN’s Hero of the Year in 2013.
“You can be a big thinker and come up with an idea and not get very far. What I appreciate about Chad Pregracke is he’s a big thinker and a big doer. He’s proven it,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, an early supporter of the project whose western Illinois district includes the bridge.
“With his personality and perseverance, Chad’s got the wherewithal to make this happen.”
‘Not just pie-in-the-sky’
The Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge that carries I-80 over the Mississippi opened in 1966 and was later named for a local Iowa Republican congressman who was instrumental in backing the Interstate Highway Act. Each day, roughly 42,000 cars drive over the more than half-mile bridge, which connects Rapids City, a small Illinois town of about 1,000 people, and LeClaire, a quaint city of about 4,000 in Iowa.
On the Illinois side of the bridge, the state owns roughly 62 acres of land that runs up a bluff with sweeping views of the river, including a welcome center rest stop with a scenic overlook. The area that encompasses the current interchanges and land surrounding the bridge would bring that total to about 100 acres.
Pregracke grew up a few houses away along the river, with the I-80 bridge visible from his parent’s backyard dock. He said he’s long thought the Illinois land and rest stop has been under utilized and first thought of placing bison there 20 years ago after visiting the Buffalo Herd Overlook along Interstate 70 near Denver.
After a tornado ripped through the Illinois interchange near the bridge in 2016, Pregracke received IDOT’s permission to clean up hundreds of downed trees and remove invasive species while restoring the area to its native prairie. His organization spent roughly $150,000 on the project.
Pregracke said when he learned two years ago that a new I-80 bridge likely was in the works, the idea of putting bison on the old one just came to him. He envisioned a concept similar to the wildlife overpasses he saw in Banff, Canada, during a snowboarding trip.
“When you look at the I-80 bridge, it isn’t some giant monstrosity like a lot of the new bridges they build now. It’s more simplistic,” Pregracke said. “It just looks like a slow rolling hill in Illinois, and I just thought if you grabbed some dirt and put some grass on there, it would just fit.”
Pregracke said the idea was so unusual that he was hesitant to share it with many at first, but an early meeting with Bustos encouraged him to go for it.
“It didn’t take me long to say, ‘I think it’s a great idea,’ ” said Bustos, who announced Friday she won’t seek re-election to a sixth term next year. “I said we ought to look at making this a national park.”
Bustos said a national park would offer the opportunity to tell the story of not just the prairie and bison, but the region’s rich Native American history. Sauk leaders Black Hawk and Keokuk made the area their home, and the nearby Black Hawk State Historic Site in Rock Island includes some of the land where their Saukenuk village was located.
With Bustos on board, Pregracke set out to build a team of experts, including his college roommate, Matt Hughes, a consultant and lobbyist in Springfield who previously was IDOT’s chief financial officer for 10 years.
Hughes set up a 2019 meeting with IDOT’s top leaders, during which he and Pregracke said none of the officials dismissed the idea out of hand. Soon after, retiring IDOT engineer Kevin Marchek joined the Bison Bridge team as project manager.
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“When I saw how well thought out the plan was, I realized this is not just pie-in-the-sky, it can happen,” said Lynn Hunt, vice president of Visit Quad Cities, the region’s tourism agency.
Paul Rumler, president and CEO of the Quad Cities Chamber, said the key to driving economic development is not the old model of simply attracting jobs but making the area a “cool place that stands out” to attract young workers and families. That, he said, makes the Bison Bridge a perfect fit for the region of nearly 500,000 people.
“It’s so important to create a sense of place here that is different than every sleepy river community in the U.S.,” Rumler said. “The Quad Cities is not that sleepy river town. This will help redefine what we’re known for locally, regionally, nationally.”
With seemingly boundless energy and a self-deprecating sense of humor, Pregracke assumes the role of part cheerleader, part truth teller for the region as he pitches the Bison Bridge. During his public unveiling, he bluntly said the Quad Cities area is failing to compete with places such as Denver, Nashville, Des Moines, Iowa City and Madison, Wisconsin, where young workers are choosing to live.
“Folks, we’re not even on the map,” he said.
Pregracke wants the QC to think bigger: If St. Louis could demolish 40 city blocks to build a 630-foot tall arch, then why can’t they put a few bison on an old bridge?
“I’m not the smartest guy. I’m seriously of average intelligence, but I just think this is doable. I don’t think of it as this grand project,” he said. “I’m not building a bridge. We’re just saving what’s already there. It’s needed. It has tons of potential, the right momentum and the right timing.”
An artist's rendering shows a plan to turn the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi River into a first-of-its kind national park. The Bison Bridge would take the current bridge connecting Iowa to Illinois, and transform it into grazing habitat for bison with 50 acres in each state. The westbound lanes would be home to the bison and the eastbound lanes would be a linear park where visitors could view them up close over the river.
Judy Ahlers is sold. She has lived in a LeClaire home with a scenic view of the river and I-80 bridge for 53 years.
“I’m all for it. I was a little shocked about the bison at first, but I like it,” said Ahlers, 74, as she raked leaves in her front yard. “Having a pedestrian path right there where we could cross the river would be very cool.”
Ahlers said the response in her neighborhood has been mostly positive, but noted some naysayers on Facebook have raised concerns about traffic or made crude comments, such as suggesting the bison would make the area stink.
“Like that would be worse than the dead fish,” she said with a laugh.
About 20,000 visitors already frequent the Buffalo Bill Museum in downtown LeClaire each year, which is near the birthplace of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, an early American soldier, buffalo hunter and showman. A stuffed bison, various Cody artifacts and an original, wood-hulled steamboat welcome visitors.
A bison also can be found in the logo of Cody Road Coffee in LeClaire, where barista Cassandra Coopman said she loves the thought of ditching her car and walking to work from her home in Rapids City.
“I feel like it’s a great idea. It will bring a lot of tourists to the area. Who doesn’t want that?” said Coopman, 50. “It’s a kind of out-there idea, but if we can make it work, I think it would be really interesting.”
Pregracke said the most common concern he’s heard since announcing the project has centered on the bisons’ well-being, which he called encouraging. Jason Baldes, the Tribal Buffalo Program manager for the National Wildlife Federation, has signed onto the project as a bison consultant.
Baldes, who is a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe and born on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, said a herd of about 10 bison would fare well in a 100-acre park. He said introducing young bison to the area would be key as they’ll naturally adjust to their surroundings, and he predicted they would be curious enough to graze back and forth over the river.
Many of the bison in the U.S. today are raised for meat and have cattle genes and “are not even genetically pure buffalo,” Baldes said. A project such as the Bison Bridge, he said, could help add to the less than 25,000 conservation bison left in the U.S.
And like Bustos, Baldes sees an opportunity to emphasize the region’s Native American history.
“Buffalo are North America’s largest land mammal that was nearly annihilated in order to disenfranchise Native Americans,” Baldes said. “That’s important history, and we need to be able to tell and educate people about that.”
Building public support
Officials with the Iowa and Illinois departments of transportation said the existing I-80 bridge needs to be replaced. It has inadequate shoulders, needs an extra lane in each direction and in 2008 and 2009 it was closed for months at a time for major repairs.
The two states have identified funding for an estimated cost of $304.5 million, but IDOT spokesman Paul Wappel stressed that figure is “extremely preliminary.” If the project were to receive funding as part of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, that could free up money for the states to spend elsewhere, Wappel said.
As the lead agency on the project, IDOT has started a study of the area — the first step in determining the best location for a new bridge.
Pregracke publicly launched the Bison Bridge to coincide with that process and is more than halfway toward his goal of collecting 50,000 signatures in support of the project at bisonbridge.org. Marchek, the former IDOT engineer and Bison Bridge project manager, said large public support can make a difference when the time comes for IDOT to decide the fate of the old bridge and the location of the new one.
For example, he said, the new $1.2 billion I-74 bridge under construction over the Mississippi between Moline, Illinois, and Bettendorf, Iowa, had its construction timeline cut in half after public outcry.
“There’s no doubt we’re gonna be a fly in the ointment for them,” Marchek said of IDOT. “That’s sometimes the way you get things done.”
Asked about the feasibility of the Bison Bridge, the Iowa Department of Transportation deferred comment to Illinois. Wappel, the IDOT spokesman, did not specifically comment on the plan’s prospects only to say ideas from all stakeholders would be considered in the design process.
If IDOT determines the most feasible option is simply to build a new bridge where the current one stands, then Marchek said it’s “game over.”
Representatives for Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for newly-elected Iowa U.S. Rep. Marianette Miller-Meeks, whose district includes the bridge, said the Republican has had initial discussions about the Bison Bridge and looks forward to having more.
Hughes said state lawmakers and mayors on both sides of the river have been supportive. He also noted the project would save taxpayers the expense of tearing down the bridge, which IDOT estimates would cost between $3 million and $6 million.
Pregracke and his team have been hesitant to put an initial price tag on the Bison Bridge plan, which calls for a visitors center built into the bridge.
Through his Living Lands and Waters nonprofit, Pregracke operates a nearly $2 million annual budget with yearly contributions from a number of major companies, including ADM, Arconic, Anheuser-Busch, Cargill, Caterpillar, Honda and John Deere among others. He predicted raising funds would not be an issue, and that much of the money would come from outside of the Quad Cities for such an “iconic Midwest” project along one of the nation’s most-traveled highways.
For her part, Bustos said she’s already discussed the Bison Bridge with a White House liaison, new Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member in U.S. history, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The former South Bend mayor and presidential candidate was asked about the project by a Quad-Cities television anchor during a round of local interviews to tout Biden’s infrastructure package. A puzzled Buttigieg seemed to think the project was designed to solve a problem with vehicles hitting bison in the Quad Cities.
“Animal strikes are a safety issue, and I’d be interested to learn more about the concept,” Buttigieg said.
After hearing about the interview, an amused Bustos had her own text conversation with Buttigieg, sending him information about the project.
“He said, ‘Such an interesting idea. Look forward to following it.’ I’ll translate that as a thumbs-up,” Bustos said. “So, he is aware of it now.”
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