Engineers: Cherokee County bridges are safe

By Dawn Treglown

CENTRE — In the wake of the recent catastrophic bridge collapse in Minnesota, local officials want everyone to know the bridges of Cherokee County are safe to travel.

Cherokee County Highway Department Chief Engineer Roger Hall said the county's 120 county bridges are inspected regularly.

“We do hands-on inspections, which means the inspectors literally put their hands on the bridges to inspect them,” Hall said.

The county has three certified inspectors. Hall said all have completed a two-week bridge inspection school and attend regular refresher courses for any updates in grading systems.

“We want to make sure that we're all grading these bridges the same,” Hall said.
The inspectors are also professional engineers and/or have five years of experience in the field.

According to Assistant County Engineer John Bates, of the 120 county bridges in Cherokee County, 69 are not categorized as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Bridges that are considered deficient or obsolete are not necessarily unsafe, he explained. He said the terms usually refer to bridges that are too narrow for modern two-way traffic or need some minor repair work.

Thirty-two of the county's bridges are either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, and another 19 are considered functionally obsolete, mainly because of their widths.

“Most of the bridges around here were built around the same time, when the lake came up,” Hall said, referring to the construction of Weiss Reservoir in the early 1960s.
“And every bridge is inspected at least every two years,” Bates said. “Posted bridges are inspected at least every 12 months.”

An exception, however, is the bridge spanning Cowan Creek on County Road 22 near Pruett's Fish Camp. Bates said it is being inspected at least every six months.

“There are settlement issues with that bridge, and it's been jacked up three times,” Bates said.

Although the bridge is considered safe, that could change if excessively heavy loads cross the bridge, which is rated to handle 15 tons. To put that figure in perspective, a school bus weighs around 12.5 tons. A few thousand more pounds could push the bridge further down into the creek bed.

Hall said the Cowan Creek bridge has the highest traffic count of any of the county's 120 bridges, averaging about 4,000 vehicles a day. But with an estimated replacement cost of at least $1.2 million, funding is not readily available to replace the bridge.

“It's a county bridge, so it's really a county problem,” Hall said. “If any federal money becomes available to replace the bridge, the county would still have to match 20 percent of the total construction cost.”

He said even if federal funds were available, the county doesn't exactly have an extra $240,000 lying around.

“So where do you get the money?” Hall asked, shaking his head.

Under former Gov. Don Siegelman, a federal program called the Garvey Bridge Replacement Program was created to provide federal money for bridges. The funds required matching grants from counties. Siegelman passed a bond issue to pay for that match.

“We got about $3.25 million, which bought us seven bridges,” Hall said.

The money should have funded more bridges, Hall said. But just about every county in the state was building bridges then, so the construction market boomed and prices escalated.

One of the bridges replaced through the federal program was a timber bridge on Hwy. 24 near Hokes Bluff.

“Although the bridge was inspected regularly, I got a call one day from a guy who said the bridge had a hole in it that was big enough to put a cotton bale through,” Bates said.

Hall said there are around 10 other bridges in Cherokee County based on designs similar to the span over Cowan Creek. Because of that, he said, bridge replacement will eventually become a major issue for the county government. Until then, he said it will take regular inspections and attention to details to ensure that the county's bridges are safe.

“We have a lot of people in Cherokee County who pay attention,” Hall said. “Walkers help us a lot by alerting us to any problems that arise along our bridges.”

But for now, Hall reiterated, the bridges in Cherokee County are safe -- including the one over Cowan Creek.

“If they weren't safe, they would be closed,” Bates added. “If we were unsure whether a bridge was safe, we would close it and determine its safety.”