Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin can remember standing in holes caused by eroded soil on either side of the bridge on Deer Run Road.
Now those holes are gone, thanks to the completion of a $150,000 bridge construction project.
City leaders held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday morning to commemorate the project’s completion. It is part of the ongoing $5 million-worth of road improvements through the city.
The new bridge, made of concrete on steel pilings, is 30 feet long and 24 feet wide, which is wide enough to accommodate two lanes. The bridge it replaced was wooden, 19 feet long and only one lane. The new bridge also includes concrete guardrails, where the old bridge lacked rails entirely.
City Engineer and Neel-Schaffer Vice President Kevin Stafford said the old bridge consisted of a wooden cap atop steel pilings. He said the cap and pilings were in relatively good shape, but the soil behind timber bulkheads on each end of the bridge were eroding and causing the road to sink.
“It was an issue from the road standpoint, and it’s not good when your bridge is losing that much soil behind it,” Stafford said.
Gavin said the bridge is another item from his list of goals he can check as completed.
“To me, it’s a big satisfaction because I wanted to make sure we protect the residents who live up here,” he said. “If the bridge had gone out of service, we would have been in a position where we couldn’t get emergency vehicles in to take care of people, nor could they have gone to work and taken care of their normal business.”
Deer Run Road includes fewer than 10 residences, according to Google Maps.
Mayor Robert Smith said he was “elated” to see the project successfully finished, and he credited Gavin with pushing to have the work done ever since Neel-Schaffer engineers determined the bridge was unsafe in September 2015.
Because of Gavin’s desire to fix the bridge, Smith said, city leaders made sure the $5 million infrastructure improvement bond included language that allowed councilmen to use money for bridge repair projects. Councilmen approved bonds for the project last fall.
“This is the first time this bridge has been renovated or had anything done to it in 50 years,” Smith said. “The old wooden bridge didn’t even have side rails on it. I’m just happy for the citizens in this area, and I’m quite sure they’ll use it very wisely.”
Deer Run Road is a dead-end street, with the bridge serving as residents’ only access point to Highway 45. The city obtained temporary easements for property owned by Jeff and Mary Nagy, and Lowndes County District 3 Supervisor John Holliman to build a temporary detour around the bridge during construction.
Other work
The rest of the infrastructure improvement project work is nearing its final phases, according to J5 Broaddus Senior Project Manager Robyn Eastman.
Eastman said paving work along Second Avenue North recently finished, and a small amount of work remains to be completed in Wards 1 and 2. Work on remaining projects should begin in the coming weeks, he said.
The main project left, he said, is repaving a portion of North 18th Avenue from the Sunflower grocery store to Burger King.
North 18th Avenue is a heavily traveled road — up to 9,900 vehicles pass every day along the part of the road set for repaving, according to a Mississippi Department of Transportation estimate. Eastman said the work will likely be disruptive to traffic.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Eastman said. “Like so often, you take the most difficult task you have and push it to the very end. (North 18th Avenue) is the one that will be challenging, for us, for the contractor and for the citizens.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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