Crawford County commissioners discussed the damage to the Butts Road and High Point bridges on March 10, following the latest heavy storms.

Both bridges were finished and opened about a month ago, but District 1 Associate Commissioner Mark Pfeiffer explained that the flooding caused some damage to the bridges.

“Here we are flooding, and the (Butts Road) bridge deck itself didn’t...sustain any damage, but, you know, it undermined quite a bit on the approach that we added later on to the project, and it seems that the concrete slab in between the two, the box culvert and the bridge, is going to be doing the same thing eventually,” Pfeiffer said.

He admitted that he had been worried about this problem, asking, before the commissioners signed off on the bridge, if “we thought footings and short walls would have been, you know, a good idea to put underneath these approaches.”

He had been reassured that the bridge wasn’t going to undermine the front side, but instead, it would roll over the slab and undermine the backside of it. The approach had been added to the project using leftover funds.

“So I want to know, I guess, why we didn’t just do it right?” Pfeiffer asked. “Because, you know, with the Butts Road thing is, we extended that project way past the... original date, gave extensions, and then said, ‘Hey, you know, this is, this is done. It’s ready to go.’ The resort owner is ready to go for business, and now we’re delayed again for seven to 10 days until the contractor can get there and do it correctly.”

Jeremy Manning with Great River Engineering (GRE) asked how much riprap, which is a layer of large stones used to help prevent erosion, was used. Danny Brown, Crawford County road consultant and bridge engineer, responded.

“Probably six foot out, with a, probably, a two-to-one slope up to the top of the approach,” Brown said.

Pfeiffer mentioned that the riprap wasn’t touched, the water had gone right over it and under the slab, undermining it.

Presiding Commissioner Steve Black said that the same thing happened to the High Point bridge over Brush Creek, but Pfeiffer explained that it was worse than what happened to the Butts Road bridge.

“I hate to criticize the engineering design, but I don’t know how far that footing goes back on this side, but it definitely should have come back (more),” Black said.

District 2 Associate Commissioner Jared Boast thinks that the main point of failure on the bridge was that the concrete approach was not back far enough on the bank.

“That’s all there is to it, and then when the log jam came downstream and jammed up against it, all the riprap, all the armor, everything did exactly what it was designed to do,” Boast said.

Pfeiffer explained that to help fix the situation at the High Point bridge, holes are going to be punched into the deck of the bridge, and concrete will be pumped in. Timeline-wise, to avoid a longer timeline and inconveniencing the landowners who use the bridge, he said it would be reopened at some point next week.

“So this bridge project is getting done in the next seven days,” Pfeiffer said.

In other business, Cindy Redburn, a member of the We the People-Citizens for a Better Crawford County, asked for the use of the Crawford County Courthouse’s lawn from 6 to 8 p.m. on July 3 for their 250th celebration of Independence Day.

A public reading of the Declaration of Independence, speakers and patriotic music will be included in the celebration events.

A motion to approve the use of the courthouse’s lawn for the event was approved with a 3-0 vote.