Conscious Choice: The Bridges of Faribault County

February 2001 | Citizen at Large

The Bridges of Faribault County

by Jay Walljasper

It’s winter, and my wife Julie and I have just returned from a hike down snowy country roads near her parents’ farm along the Iowa-Minnesota border. This is some of the richest agricultural land in the world, yet each year it seems more barren. As farms have grown larger and more mechanized, the landscape itself looks ever more lifeless as hardwood groves are levelled and abandoned farmhouses ploughed under to make room for a few more rows of soybeans.

Industrialized farming is turning these bountiful prairielands into little more than an open air agribusiness factory. Farmers who see themselves as stewards of the land rather than excavators of prime Midwestern topsoil find it increasingly hard to compete with massive grain operations and livestock feedlots. Sustainable farming is making some inroads, but it’s still not attractive for many small farmers — like Julie’s brother — who don’t know how they’d financially manage the lower yields that initially accompany a transition to organic agriculture.

A recent obsession of ours has been bridges, and this year we were pleased to find that our favorite little valley, a stream that rushes into the Blue Earth River, has not been ripped asunder to make way for a modern bridge. This has not always been our favorite bridge, but it’s the only one in the rural township that hasn’t yet fallen victim to construction crews. They not only tear down the simple wood or steel bridges, replacing them with pre-formed concrete spans that block your view of the water below, but they also widen the bridges to accommodate Brobdignagian farm machinery and rip out many trees along the streamside. I’m sure that engineers have concocted some sort of excuse to justify the destruction of all these trees, but to me it appears a simple case of hating nature.

We have no illusions that this humble little bridge, sitting picturesquely downhill along a curving gravel road, will survive long. The commissioners of the local rural township can tap into a pot of state money to help pay for "improving" it, and they would feel foolish to pass up such generosity.

Indeed, the bridge may be in need of repair, or even replacement. But it does not need to be widened and the nearby trees do not need to be chopped down. Yet that’s what will happen because the state decrees that certain standards and specifications must be met on all new bridges funded with state money. I doubt that the engineers who drafted such guidelines ever walked down this or any other country road, and I know the taxpayers who will foot most of the bill would consider it a scandalous use of their money. Indeed, there is only one family left along this road and even if they could afford the widest farm machinery built, which is improbable, they could still reach their farthest field via another new bridge that desecrated an even lovelier spot a few years ago. But it will happen anyway because the township, which is poorer and less populated than it used to be now that so many families have lost their farms, needs financial help to repair their bridges.

This is one of our American tragedies. We’re an enormous country, yet our leaders still attempt to dictate what’s good for places like Faribault County without ever leaving their offices in Washington or state capitals. Arbitrary decisions made in the bowels of distant bureaucracies doom lovely little valleys in southern Minnesota and no one knows except the people who live nearby, and they don’t complain because they need money from the state.

Thinking about this bridge helps me understand how people voted Republican in last year’s election to strike a blow against government interference. But George W. Bush, Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and their ideological allies in state capital across the land will not halt ecological follies like this. Ugly and unnecessary bridges do not bother them any more than obscene and unnecessary Pentagon weapons programs. They’re not really against big government; they’re simply against government measures that don’t boost the power of large corporations. Important social programs that help the poor and unfortunate are the only ones that are wasteful in their eyes.

I worry about what will happen to America by the time Julie and I take a walk next winter down these roads. The little bridge may be gone and there may be a family or two living beneath the ugly new one.

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