Starke County Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler is working on a solution to find a way to fix the failed culvert on County Road 700 East north of County Road 600 North.
Ritzler reminded both the Starke County Commissioners and Starke County Council members last week that the culvert failed last year and the road remains closed. He’s said that the closure affects a bus route for the Oregon-Davis School Corporation, but the road doesn’t experience much traffic beyond that.
The commissioners have opened bids twice for the bridge with both of the bid rounds finding prices way over the engineer’s estimate. Ritzler thought that the timing of the completion of the project might have caused in the inflation of the bids in the first round, but they may have come in high in the second round due to availability.
Ritzler said the options are to simply replace the culvert with a single round 96” pipe which is what it was before, install continuous slab top bridge, a double pipe culvert which some in the county are failing, a box culvert, or a modular bridge. He will get more information on modular bridges to bring back to the commissioners at their next meeting.
The soils at that location are a main source of some of the issues.
