Faster Beer Runs?

THE PROPOSED Stillwater bridge has once again made it to the top of a list of programs whose elimination could help the federal budget and the environment, according to a coalition of advocacy groups ranging from the Sierra Club to Taxpayers for Common Sense. The coalition's annual "Green Scissors Report" says the feds don't need to sink $71 million into a project that only serves local needs--especially when the four-lane span envisioned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation would "negatively impact the scenery, groundwater, and neighboring habitat."

Another Green Scissors target sits barely 50 miles from Stillwater: It's the Department of Defense's Extremely Low Frequency Transmitters (ELF) project near Clam Lake, Wisconsin. Mothballing the underground communications system, designed to send signals to submarines during a nuclear war, could save taxpayers some $60 million over the next five years.