Update On That BNSF Bridge Across The Wide Missouri -- March 17, 2024

Locator: 46784BNSF.

I missed this earlier.

Link here. 

From the link:

BISMARCK, N.D. — The North Dakota Supreme Court has rebuffed a preservation group’s latest legal effort to block demolition of BNSF’s Bismarck-Mandan Rail Bridge, upholding a lower court’s dismissal of a suit by Friends of the Rail Bridge on technical grounds.

The Fargo Forum reports that the court’s five justices, in a decision released today [Thursday, Feb. 8], unanimously upheld the earlier decision that the Friends group failed to exhaust its administrative remedies before filing its suit.

“It is undisputed that the Appellates did not request a hearing within 30 days (or at any time)” after the state’s Department of Water Resources issued two sovereign land permits — one allowing BNSF to construct its new bridge over the Missouri River, one to subsequently demolish the current bridge, which dates to 1883 — in April 2023, Justice Lisa Fair McEvers wrote in the court’s decision. “Accordingly, no hearing was held, nor was a hearing request denied by DWR.”

A lawyer for the Friends group, Lyle Witham, said in a statement to the newspaper that the group was disappointed ....”