Repair work on the pedestrian bridge at The Riverwalk is in its preliminary stages, according to Mayor Keith Gaskin.
During his regular press conference Wednesday morning, Gaskin said Malouf Construction, who has contracted to repair the stricken bridge, is assembling two cranes and some necessary infrastructure on land owned by the Lowndes County Port.
According to federal court documents, a tow boat owned by Cooper Marine and Timberlands, based in Mobile, Alabama, was pushing eight barges south on the Tenn-Tom Waterway on Feb. 6, 2020, when the boat and its loaded barges grounded near the channel opening to the Old Tombigbee River near Columbus. A boat owned by Max Marine came to aid the grounded vessel and, in the process, a loaded barge broke loose, drifted down the river and struck the pedestrian bridge’s eastern support pier.
The city filed claims seeking damages from both companies for negligence.
The city received about $4.2 million in the settlement in January. Officials said at the time that amount should fully cover the cost of repairs.
Work was expected to start this spring, Gaskin said, but Malouf has struggled to get equipment in place.
City Engineer Kevin Stafford told The Dispatch Wednesday afternoon the holdup centered around cranes.
“The original plan was to use the Lowndes County Port Authority’s crane,” Stafford explained. “Since the original negotiations went on, the port has gotten really busy. It’s now cheaper for the contractor to use their own cranes for the duration of the project.”
Those cranes are on-site at a staging area on the port property, Stafford said.
“I don’t want to knock the port,” Stafford said. “The port and its operator were both willing to work with us, but … all those things that matter for them to be able to do business (with the crane) got in the way of the bridge contractor being able to do what they needed to do with some dependability.”
Gaskin said the city was still “a couple of weeks away” from seeing work start on the bridge itself. He estimated repairs could start as early as the first week of October.
Once it gets underway, Stafford estimated the repairs would take six or seven months.
“To keep the price down we agreed the contractor could name when he got to start,” Stafford said. “He had the ability to delay in order to not drive the costs up. He’s not on the city’s clock, he’s on his own clock, and it’s not costing the city anything but time.
The bridge, completed in 1927, is included on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been closed to pedestrian traffic since shortly after the accident.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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