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Construction options are open pending the results of a biannual bridge report done June 13 through Union County Secondary Roads.
Zach Gunsolley, Union County engineer, explained the report is done every year with approximately half of the county bridges being looked at alternating years.
While the results are still out, Gunsolley is sure there are several bridges decreasing in weight.
Safety
Bridge safety was brought up during a Union County Board of Supervisors meeting several weeks ago when Gunsolley brought up the issue with a bridge near a county residential home.
“If a bridge is down to 8-ton weight limit or 5 tons or 3 tons, the bridge is in such poor condition that we want to ensure the safety of the traveling public,” Gunsolley said.
Part of the 170 county bridges are inspected to look for aspects that could endanger the safety of that specific population.
Currently, at least one bridge has an increase in the weight restriction because of a new wooden deck on the bridge. But, Gunsolley pointed out, that is an exception as most generally decline in structural capacity.
“The report this year included 108 bridges, so it’s going to take us awhile to get through this and to know exactly how many decreased in capacity, and how many increased, if there’s more than one,” Gunsolley said.
After compiling the results of the report, Gunsolley will begin organizing it to see when certain bridges will have work done, and if any will need to be put on the 5-year plan.
“We will schedule repairs and do work orders on some of these bridges, based on what we’ve found,” Gunsolley said. “We’ll have to add that to the work that we already have to do.”
Projects are either currently in the works or scheduled already, so bridges will need to be organized based on results. One example is a low-weight-limit bridge on a dirt road near the intersection of a gravel road also with a low weight-limit bridge. Gunsolley suggested organizing bridges like this with a point system, including aspects such as township and report results.
Bridges are updated using steel piling, which Gunsolley said will help the bridge last longer “because nine times out of 10 we have a weight limit on the bridges because of bad, rotten wood piling.”
Photos of a bridge damaged in Winneshiek County were brought to the board’s attention when the issue came up. In the photos, a large vehicle drove across a bridge incapable of handling the weight, and when the vehicle had one more set of wheels to drive onto the solid road, the bridge collapsed. Gunsolley said similar situations have occurred in Ringgold County, without the collapsed bridge.
“Unfortunately, some users of the county bridge system have ignored signs of posted bridges in other parts of the state, or caused the bridge to collapse,” Gunsolley said. “It is important that a similar situation does not happen in Union County.
“I can tell you that each harvest in Ringgold County brought a handful of phone calls of people complaining that they saw something much heavier than a posting cross it,” Gunsolley said. “The biannual report is going to help me with an updated bridge condition of the overall bridge system here in Union County and to help prioritize future bridge projects and where we need to allocate (funds).”
In other county supervisors news:
• Soil testing is scheduled to be done in the future to discover specific data on samples on REA Road. This will allow Union County Secondary Roads employees to allocate materials more specifically, saving the county money on wasted materials if the testing is not done. Testing will cost approximately $15,000.