Sebastian County Government: White Bluff Bridge Replacement Timeline

Press release from the Sebastian County Government:

May 20, 2021

This bridge replacement is a State-Aid Project designed by ARDOT engineers.  The bridge was posted at 6-ton load capacity, was unsafe for heavy vehicles including school buses and fire trucks.

From this point the County had been granted permission to take the northern end of the project out of the job. This would allow the ditch not to change as much.

SILCO began working on the south end of the project and discovered that the utilities still were in the project site and that the plans for ARDOT needed to be reviewed, for the project to go as planned, and that the utilities would have to be moved again.  Moving the utilities was not what anyone wanted.   The County presented ARDOT with a proposal to have the ditch run underground as opposed to open ditch.

It took ARDOT a couple weeks to approve the change.  When approved by ARDOT the County ordered the pipe from Schurlock and had it delivered to the bridge replacement site.

The bridge load rating was so low that an unloaded pickup truck was the heaviest load that was supposed to be going over it.  School buses, dump trucks, delivery trucks, fire trucks did not need to use the bridge.

This information will be posted on the County Website and updated as work progresses.

A completion date will be determined

This press release was produced by the Sebastian County Government. The views expressed here are the author’s own.