Grant County bridge work under way

MOSES LAKE — Two Grant County bridges will be closed for a while, maybe a long while, while one is repaired and the other designed and rebuilt. 

Bridge 247, southeast of Warden on Road W Southeast, has been removed completely. Bridge 202, east of Moses Lake on Road N Northeast, is still there but one end is resting on temporary supports. Grant County Engineer David Bren said the trouble at Bridge 202 was discovered by an anonymous truck driver.

“The last truck to go across the bridge called us and said, ‘I just drove across your bridge and it wobbled,’” Bren said. “I don’t know who it is that called us, but they went across our bridge and felt it wobble.”

The bridge was closed in August 2023.

Tuesday morning crews from N.A. Degerstrom, Spokane, were jacking up the north end of the bridge to rest it on a series of supports. Bren said the problem wasn’t so much with the bridge itself as its support system on its north end.

“The sandy soil underneath the abutment over the years eroded away. So there was this big pocket underneath the abutment,” he said. “It took 80 cubic feet of concrete grout just to fill in that pocket that was underneath the abutment.”

The bridge crosses an irrigation canal, and temporary support pillars are sitting on the concrete liner in the canal. 

“The bridge is about half a million pounds on that side. So half a million pounds (was) lifted up and put on this temporary construction pier. Then, we’ll go in and remove the old failed abutment on the north side, and then we’ll have, basically, a bridge hanging on a temporary pier. But it’s really done nicely,” Bren said. “It almost could be its own abutment.” 

The original foundation on the north bank rested on unstable soil, he said. There’s solid rock below the original foundation. 

“It’ll look like you have this bridge just standing, and there will be this big pocket behind it as we pull out all of the old abutment,” Bren said. “Then we’re going to dig all the way down to the rock, which was about three feet below the old abutment. It’ll actually sit on the rock, rather than sitting on sandy soil above the rock.” 

Bren said the bridge is scheduled for completion in 2025. Total cost of the project is about $2.4 million. 

Bridge 247 also crosses an irrigation canal, and it was closed to allow for widening of that canal. A temporary one-lane bridge was supposed to cross the canal while county officials rebuilt it, but the plan changed when the central support for the existing bridge was accidentally damaged in February. East Columbia Basin Irrigation District crews were working on the canal and hit the bridge support, Bren said.

“The pier that they hit was needed for our temporary bridge to rest on,” he said. “So now we don’t have a temporary bridge.”

Because the remaining section of the bridge was unstable, ECBID crews knocked it down. 

“The bridge would’ve flopped into the water, and then it could’ve gone down and hit the next bridge, which would not be cool,” Bren said.

Bridge 247 is projected to reopen in 2027. County officials have obtained about $3.4 million in federal funding to pay part of the cost, with $886,000 from the Washington Department of Transportation to pay the remainder.

Design and engineering are scheduled for 2024, Bren said, with the project probably going out for bid in 2025. 

“You need 18 months to build a concrete bridge like that,” he said.

County officials plan to make some changes to Bridge 247’s design. 

“Where the bridge is at now was reset when the canal came through,” Bren said. “They took the old road and moved it over.”

That allowed the designers to take advantage of some natural geological features, he said, but it added a sharp turn directly after driving off the bridge.

“We’re going to get it relocated, and it’ll go over the original road alignment,” Bren said. “So we actually have to build an earthen ramp (to connect the road to the bridge deck). There’s going to be an earthen ramp of about 50,000 yards (of material) to connect there.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.

    Each pillar has to be checked as crews lower Bridge 202 onto its temporary supports.
  

    With the temporary supports in place, a construction worker verifies Bridge 202 is sitting properly.
  

    Bridge 202 near Moses Lake is closed to traffic in order to repair it.