The Troup County Board of Commissioners approved bids on three county bridges that county staff have determined to be in need of repair at its regular meeting on Tuesday.

The bridges – which are located on Stewart Road, Hunt Road and Mountville Hogansville Road — had been ruled structurally insufficient or deficient, which means that over time they could become unsafe for traffic, especially the large trucks that drive over those roads. They would most likely be closed down around the same time, but due to where they are located and relatively low traffic on those areas, officials did not believe that closing the bridges would cause unnecessary traffic problems.

“These bridges are really unrelated in that none of them are in close proximity to one another,” County Engineer Emery said. “We expect to award these on about the same schedule. We ended up with low responsive bids on the three bridge projects – which as I said are not related – from three different contractors.”

Tidwell Construction Company won the bid to replace the Stewart Road bridge over Long Cane Creek for a total of $813,230. Southeastern Site Development Inc. won the bid to replace the Hunt Road bridge over Mud Creek for a total of $860,537. Finally, McCoy Grading Inc. won the bid to replace the Mountville Hogansville Road bridge over Flat Creek for a total of $892,630.

“We are looking at roughly $2.5 million that we are going to use on these bridges out of our SPLOST,” County Commission Chairman Patrick Crews said.

All three bridge repairs will require road closures and detours, though as always, the county hopes that the bridges will be closed for the minimum time possible.

“(The timeline on construction will be) 150 days after the notice to proceed at each bridge, and all three of these can be closed for 90 days max,” County Planner Tracie Hadaway said. “Each one has its own timeline.”

The county was aware of the fact that the bridge closures could have an impact on traffic through those areas – especially school bus traffic – but felt that the bridges needed to be repaired as soon as possible. Emery stated that he did not believe that the repairs on the bridges could have been successfully completed during the Troup County School System’s summer break because the construction timeline is longer than the current summer break.

“It will certainly affect all of the traveling public that uses each of these three bridges every day,” Emery said. “Without these bridges, there will be some long detours proposed. They are valuable bridges, and it is important that we have these bridges in place, but it is also important to replace them when they get to this level of deterioration.”

The new bridges will allow roughly the same amount of water to pass through them as the current bridges in order to avoid flooding downstream, and it is estimated that they should last between 50 and 100 years depending on traffic, weather and other factors.

The county still has one other ongoing bridge project at this time which maybe still underway when still goes back into session in August.

“Right now we have Hammett Road Bridge closed at the tributary to Yellow Jacket Creek, just south of Hightower Road,” Emery said. “That has been closed for a few months now, and it is expected to be closed possibly for a few more months.”

The Troup County Board of Commissioners approved the bids and voted to allow the contracts to be executed by the County Manager or County Attorney.

The Greenville Street bridge in LaGrange was not considered for repair under SPLOST because it is a Georgia Department of Transportation bridge that will require approval from the railroads before GDOT can replace it.