OLIVIA -- Renville County Commissioner Gale Dahlager of Sacred Heart returned from a recent Minnesota Association of Counties meeting on transportation with a straightforward message.
"What a dire need there is for more money,'' Dahlager told his fellow commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday.
Renville County recently joined other counties in approving a resolution asking the state to increase funding for bridge replacement. Renville County has 50 bridges that are structurally deficient, public works director Marlin Larson told the commissioners earlier this month.
The township, county and county-state aid financed bridges are identified on a list kept by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
Neighboring Redwood County has 53 bridges on the state list. Other area counties do not have nearly as many. The MnDOT list shows 28 deficient bridges in Yellow Medicine County; 21 in Lac qui Parle; 14 in Chippewa; 10 in Kandiyohi; three in Meeker; and nine in McLeod.
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Renville County has 225 bridges, a relatively large number but not surprising due to the county's size and especially its geography. Larson pointed out that the county and its townships have numerous roads crossing the Minnesota River and its many tributaries.
Also, the county has more than 700 miles of open ditches which are crossed by bridges of all sorts.
Larson advises that the term "structurally deficient'' does not mean the bridges are in imminent danger of collapse. "We don't have anything that we think is going to fall down. If we did, they'd be closed,'' Larson told the Tribune in a separate interview.
The term "deficient" is placed on a bridge if its deck, supporting beams or trusses, or its piers or abutments are rated as poor or worse. Bridges are inspected on a one- or two-year cycle depending on their condition, according to information provided by Larson.
The county ranks all of its deficient bridges for replacement based on priority and attempts to replace them accordingly. Larson said the county is not able to replace as many bridges as it would like each year.
The number of bridges that can be replaced each year depends on the funds allocated to the county by the state, said Larson. Highway user taxes and bond monies distributed by the state pay for the greatest share of bridge replacement costs.
The resolution adopted by Renville County asking for greater funding states that the county would like to see its deficient bridges replaced in the next five years.
The cost of replacing all 50 bridges on the county's priority list is estimated at $7,181,900.
