(Spirit Lake)– A bridge in Dickinson county is being closed because it has become structurally deficient. County Engineer Dan Eckert told the Supervisors this (Tues.) morning the bridge on 110th Avenue in the western part of the county has been deemed in an inspection report of no longer being safe. It’s in the same area where another bridge was closed in recent years. That drew concern from Supervisor Kim Wermersen…
“We’re in a real dilemma because we have not, I guess, maintained over the years and of course we’re going to have to do deal with it one way or the other but I just really struggle with having two closed bridges just a mile apart from each other for those farmers out there and for any traffic out there.”
Saying they have little choice in the matter, the supervisors voted unanimously to close the bridge. Options over how to repair or replace it and how those would be funded were tossed around during today’s (Tues.) meeting but nothing definite was decided on that.
Eckert told the supervisors they’ll likely have to deal with some other failing bridges over the next few years…
“We typically have only used HBP money, that’s highway bridge replacement. It’s a federal money that we get, about $110,000 a year. We’ve snuck some farm to market money in bridge replacements over the years but we typically haven’t, in my administration or even the one before me, haven’t used a lot of local funding for bridges. And it’s starting to show.”
The main debate is over whether to spend money to strengthen the bridges or replace them altogether.
On another matter, the supervisors voted four-to-one to award the low bid of $2,856,000 from Graves Construction of Spencer for the construction of a new secondary roads facility just east of Spirit Lake. The bid was about a million dollars below the architect’s estimated. Supervisor Tim Fairchild cast the no vote, saying he would like to see a portion of the money earmarked for the shop project re-allocated to address the bridge issue.
