Inspections could close dozens of county bridges
Each day, more than 1,700 vehicles pass over a small bridge on Columbia-Purvis Road just off U.S. 98.
That simple daily occurrence could change within the next two years because of a new state inspection program and it has County Engineer Jeff Dungan and the Marion County Board of Supervisors concerned about a potential bridge crisis.
According to Dungan, the state is currently inspecting all bridges with timber pilings through an independent inspection agency. Marion County has more than 50 of the bridges that could be in jeopardy if they are deemed unsafe.
“The counties have been responsible for inspecting their local bridges since the 1980s,” Dungan said. “The office of State Aid Road Construction has coordinated that and federal highway funds have paid for that. There are 10,000 bridges like that in Mississippi and Marion County has about 150.”
The bridge on Columbia-Purvis Road is bridge No. 79, and Dungan used it as an example as he spoke about the inspections.
“It was built in 1973,” he said. “If it were closed, the detour would be four miles. You would have to go down to Pine Ridge Road and come back around Friendship Church Road and back to Columbia-Purvis Road to make the detour. What we say in our report is that the substructure is satisfactory. It’s not posted with a weight limit. That is the current status of this bridge, according to State Aid. I am the inspector, the county engineer. We inspect the bridge every two years. It was last inspected almost a full two years ago.”
Dungan said the concern about the bridges across the state stems from a federal highway report issued recently.
“A discovery was made that Mississippi had more bridges with timber substructure that were rated poorly that are still open to traffic than any state in the nation,” he said.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation, receives approximately half of its billion dollar funding from Federal Highway funds and the other half from state funds. State Aid is a division of MDOT, run independently by an appointee of the governor, but there is a connection between them; that connection is federal funding, according to Dungan.
With the concerns, 120 bridges across Mississippi were inspected by an independent inspector. The bridges were randomly selected.
“They came down with federal and state bridge inspectors, independent of the counties, and took a look at those bridges and determined that 64 of them should be immediately closed,” he said. “That very startling reaction was based on the judgment of the federal and state inspectors about what a timber pile bridge can support in a state o’f decay. There is a great deal of judgment that goes into that. Those closures were not based on a mathematical calculation; they were based on the judgment of the condition of the timber pile. They disagreed with the counties’ assessment of the same piling. The counties had determined that perhaps the bridge could remain open and be posted low weight in order to keep it open until funding could be found or was available. The federal highway and state inspectors and their judgment of the piling and the load it could support did not match that.”
Though bridges in neighboring counties have been closed, none in Marion County have been shut as of now.
“The sampling in Marion County, the one bridge that was part of that 120, they came and audited that bridge, and the county has it posted at 3 tons,” Dungan said. “They agreed that the posting was sufficient and that the bridge did not have to be closed. It passed that audit.”
Dungan said the concern is that any one of the 53 bridges in Marion County constructed using wooden pilings could be deemed unsafe by inspectors. Earlier this month, inspectors closed two bridges in Pearl River County and several bridges have been closed in Walthall and Jefferson Davis counties.
Out of 10,000 bridges in Mississippi, 2,600 of them are constructed using wood pilings. Many of the bridges were built during the 1970s and 1980s. Compounding the problem is that no state or federal money is available to repair the bridges, according to Dungan.
Marion County currently has several bridge construction projects on hold, including two bridges on Williamsburg Road.
“These two bridges fall into this category of timber pilings,” he said. “The county has prepared plans, acquired right-of-ways and has gotten the project ready for bids. It is a federally-funded project. The county got obligation of $1 million in federal funding to replace those two bridges about a year ago. Because they only get $22 million a year in state aid, there are a stack of projects waiting for funding. We were anticipating a year or two in getting that funding. Now, it will be pushed back even further. In the meantime, if that consultant comes in December to look at that bridge and they close it, then the county will have a closed bridge on a major route without funding.”
The concern in Marion, and in fact, all counties in Mississippi is that closed bridges would need to be repaired and federal funding could be years away. Dungan has estimated that even temporary repairs to the county’s bridges could cost more than $1 million, with permanent work costing nearly $7 million.
“In Jeff Davis County, the inspectors looked at four bridges and closed four bridges,” he said. “In Walthall County they looked at four and closed three. The same thing could happen in Marion County. To solve the problem, which is really a crisis, it would take four or five mills in additional taxes.”
Dungan said all of the bridges in question are slated to be inspected in the next two years, with many of them on the list to be completed by December.
“The problem isn’t going away,” he said. “Some of these bridges would be closed immediately. Even if they weren’t closed, they might need to be closed in the near future.”
Dungan said the bridges on Williamsburg Road, Columbia-Purvis Road and others including New Hope Road and Shiloh Firetower Road are of large concern because of heavy traffic volume.
“We’re talking about roads that have a yellow stripe down the middle,” he said. “They have several hundred cars a day. The bridge on Columbia-Purvis Road has as high a traffic volume as any bridge in Marion County. Any of these bridges will impact schools, businesses and residents. That’s just an example bridge. Granted, there are a few on that list that if they are closed will not be reopened. It will be an inconvenience to some people. It may impact a dozen or two dozen people. The county will have to make those decisions. Some of the bridges are in pretty remote areas. Even if you cut 10 of the bridges out, it wouldn’t make much of a financial impact. It might mean $6 million in repairs becomes $5 million. The problem isn’t going away.”
The Marion County Board of Supervisors will likely discuss the situation later this week as it meets in special session on budget issues. The Board must have its preliminary budget ready to publish on Aug. 22 ahead of a public hearing set for 10 a.m. on Sept. 7. The budget will be adopted on Sept. 13.
Pictured Above: County officials are concerned that bridges like this one on Columbia-Purvis Road could be closed after inspections. |Photo by Mark Rogers
