Press "Enter" to skip to content

Highway 54 bridge maintenance underway may indicate future of MODOT’s projects

A backhoe lifts heavy boulders to prevent a scour at the abutment of the Highway 54 Missouri River Bridge Oct. 22, 2015 near Jefferson City. (Travis Zimpfer/The Missouri Times)
A backhoe lifts heavy boulders to prevent a scour at the abutment of the Highway 54 Missouri River Bridge Oct. 22, 2015 near Jefferson City. 

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – While the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) continues to lobby for more funds to fix what has been called a “crumbling” road and bridge infrastructure in the state, maintenance is underway on the Highway 54 Missouri River Bridge.

After a 2008 survey found that sediment had been removed from the bridge’s central supports, a phenomenon called a scour, a company from Columbia, Illinois, Luhr Bros. Inc., will be paid $1.5 million for the supplementary repairs under the supervision of MODOT. The money was allocated from both federal funds and with funds awarded in the summer of 2015, according to the 2015-2019 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP).

Patty Lemongelli, the district construction and materials engineer for MODOT’s central district, oversees the project.

“The scour was first noticed in 2008,” Lemongelli says “Once they determined there is maybe an issue or concern, they will increase that interval to every year. They just monitored it over time and then decided it’s time to do something about it.”

After starting initial preparations late in the summer and beginning actual work on the river at the beginning of October, Lemongelli says she and the project lead from Luhr Bros. believe the project could wrap up as early as next week, though they are aiming to finish by Nov. 1.

Filter bags filled with a  sand-gravel like material will be placed at the bottom of the bridge support. Each one weighs around four tons. (Travis Zimpfer/The Missouri Times)
Filter bags filled with a sand-gravel-like material will be placed at the bottom of the bridge support. Each one weighs around four tons. 

The process is to replace the sediment, rocks, gravel, sand, silt, etc. with larger rocks and filter bags filled with a coarse granular material somewhere between gravel and sand around the support or abutment, well below the surface of the river. The hundreds of rocks used in the project, enough to fill several barges, have an average weight of 6,500 lbs, and the filter bags weigh as much as an African elephant.

The danger of forgoing this kind of work could mean the strength of the Missouri River’s flow could carry away the abutment – and a good portion of the bridge with it.

“We decided after monitoring it for several years, it was time to go in and do it,” Lemongelli said. “There was no threat to the structural integrity of the bridge. However, if it were to continue over several years, you would get closer to where it would be a little bit more risky.”

While work on this particular bridge, considered a main thoroughfare by MODOT, would likely continue regardless of the department’s recent decision to cut its number of projects, smaller bridges especially in rural areas could may not get the same amount of attention.

“Of course this being a major bridge a major traffic flow, it’s going to be a greater priority, but I think if it were on a supplementary route, in that case it probably would be a much smaller bridge, it wouldn’t be as costly, but I think there would be more thought going into, is this the right thing to do, is it serving the best interests of the traveling public. If you do one project here, you’re taking away from another project being done someplace else.”

Lemongelli said the belt-tightening by MODOT has made operations difficult for the department in recent years. She says this kind of work will become more common; rather than building new highways and adding miles to the road system to make traffic move safer and more smoothly, a lot of MODOT’s work will focus on fixing the main roads and highways in Missouri.

“People rely on our transportation system for everyday life, the economic vitality,” she said. “It makes it tough, and that’s why we get pretty excited about work like this. The projects we are focused on right now are more maintenance focused. Sometimes that’s not as exciting or as glamorous as building a highway in Osage County, doing the expressway down at the Lake or building a DDI (diverging diamond interchange) up at the I-70 stadium interchange.

“We’re limited to smaller scale projects and more maintenance.”

 

PHOTOS Travis Zimpfer/The Missouri Times