BROOKINGS – Road access had some members of the Brookings County Commission worried on Tuesday, with Commissioner Lee Ann Pierce saying weight restrictions on bridges have interfered with some producers’ ability to haul goods.
“I’m a little uncomfortable with the fact … that we … block off these bridges and then we tell our producers, ‘You’ve got to figure out some way to get your stuff to market,’ and then, ‘That’s a township road; the bridges may be our problem, but that’s a township road and we’re not going to take any responsibility for helping out with that,’” Pierce said.
Seasonal weight restrictions on certain rural roads don’t help the matter, though they’re necessary to help protect road conditions.
According to County Highway Superintendent Dick Birk, those seasonal weight restrictions “protect the road surfaces from breakup from heavy loads until the roads have a chance to kind of dry out and firm up.”
Bridge weight restrictions have a similar goal in mind – preservation of the structure’s integrity – but are permanent until the bridge is improved.
Pierce said she’s gotten calls from people in Medary Township, specifically, with complaints about the restrictions on bridges along Highway 12. One is described as being 1 mile south and 1 1/2 miles west of Brookings, and the other is 1 mile south and 2 1/2 miles west of Brookings. A pair of bridges near the Moody County line on Highway 77 are also problematic.
It’s up to the individual to find an alternate route to haul their loads along.
The unfortunate thing, Birk said, is that about the only way to protect bridges until they are repaired or replaced is to reduce the weight going across them, and what’s more, that could be five or seven years away thanks to the lengthy process involved.
To begin work on a bridge, there are regulations that must be followed, permits obtained and studies conducted.
“You have to contact the Corps of Engineers. There are environmental studies, historical significance studies and usually this process can take anywhere from a month to six months and longer,” Birk explained in a separate interview.
Preliminary engineering studies, designing the bridge and getting the project out to bid also can take time.
“Once they get to the point where they’re starting to remove the old structure, like the ones we’re currently doing north of Bruce, it could be like 18 months just for removal,” Birk said.
By his count, there are as many as 35 bridges that inconvenience people due to their weight restrictions, and it takes a lot of dollars to work on them all, hence the prioritization of projects in the five-year plan.
He added that when prioritizing projects in the five-year plan for improving the bridges throughout the county, “I tried to look at the entire picture and see what would probably produce the best results for the most good.”
Since the county’s well on schedule with work on bridge structures under 20 feet, he suggested that money for those projects could instead be put toward these kinds of projects instead.
But he noted that there are about 17 bridges crossing rivers in the county, and each would likely cost more than $2 million.
“The situation we’re looking at in Medary Township where you’ve got a $2 million and a $2 million-plus within a mile of each other, it creates an almost do-them-both or do one, and it would take a significant amount of capital to do either one. In other words, everything else would get put on hold,” Birk said.
By April, the county will know if it’s been awarded any grants for bridge improvement; once the county knows one way or the other on the grants, it’d be in a better position to look into solutions.
“With those grants being awarded for the ones south on 77, because those are the worst of the worst down there, if we got a grant for those, that would still leave us with our share at roughly $400,000 or $500,000. But it’s still better than $2.5 million. Then we would also know that we’re going to have to go back for the ones that didn’t get grants and go back to ground zero in 2018. Then we can talk as a group and I’ll come up with my best scenario of what would be the best approach,” he said.
And there are certainly others facing similar problems throughout the county, outside of Medary Township.
Pierce requested that Birk take a look into any possible ways to help alleviate the issues seen at these bridges that the county could then consider.
“I would just like a little more information on what’s going on with that and us looking at whether or not we have any responsibility here,” she said.
The county should have a clearer picture at its options come April, when it’ll have word back on what projects in the five-year plan received grant dollars.
“We have so many bridges, and it would be great if we could get some grants, but I think we’re going to find out that we’re just going to have to take it a year at a time and try to address them the best we can,” Birk said.
He added in a separate interview, “The other (projects) we’ve put in for grants, should we receive that, it’s such a benefit to have a structure get 80 percent reimbursed. You wouldn’t want to delay or substitute because you wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.
