Fighting global warming

It's not generally known, but the Belle Isle Bridge on Oklahoma City's north side was originally designed as an environmental tool for use in the slowly-warming Arctic: once installed, it would trap ice particles and retain them as long as possible along its surface during the winter, thereby helping to keep the temperature down and the polar-bear habitat intact. When the Canadians refused to pick up their half of the development tab, the inventors abandoned the project and sold the prototype at a substantial discount to ODOT, which put it to use as a mundane transportation module.