Darn right it does.
A question of ownership on a stretch of Old Highway 10 West along with two dilapidating spans is raising a ruckus from Mineral County to Helena.
“From Old Highway 10 on the west side of the Cyr Bridge, clear over to the Scenic Bridge at Fish Creek, we have not entered in a formal agreement with the Department of Transportation,” Tim Read, the county's planning director in Superior, said this week.
“We believe we abandoned them in the 1960s after the interstate went through, and it's a county road,” said Charity Watt Levis, public information officer for the Montana Department of Transportation. “What we're looking for now is actual formal documentation.”
It's a worthwhile search, with intriguing ramifications.
Both the Cyr Bridge and the Scenic Bridge, four miles apart along the popular Alberton Gorge recreation corridor, are aged and crumbling. Inspections by the MDT, including those made after a similarly designed bridge collapsed and killed 13 people in Minnesota last month, identified the former as “structurally deficient” and the other as “functionally obsolete.”
“We don't have the money to fix them, I can tell you that,” Mineral County Commissioner Judy Stang said.
Meanwhile, Mineral County is growing. Half a dozen subdivisions along the Interstate 90 corridor from Alberton to St. Regis are in varying stages of the approval process. This year alone, four developments totaling more than 200 lots have been proposed.
“That's at least three, if not four, times our typical average,” said Read.
A smaller three-lot proposal called “Lodges at Alberton Gorge” was denied by county commissioners in June because the only access is over the Scenic Bridge. The road winds under the interstate and dead-ends a few miles after that.
The Scenic Bridge, built in 1928, catches the eye of westbound I-90 travelers just past the Fish Creek interchange. It's one of two steel-deck truss bridges in Montana dubbed structurally deficient, the lowest rating a functioning bridge can receive.
It means that, while the structure is safe for most vehicles to drive on, it needs repairs. The Scenic Bridge has an 11-ton load limit. Concrete-bearing trucks and subdivisions aren't welcome.
Bryce Bondurant learned that this summer. The Missoula real estate agent represented the owner of the proposed Alberton Gorge development. It was to be three lots on 12 acres on the west end of the Scenic Bridge, one of the Triple Bridges over the Clark Fork near Fish Creek.
“The state said it's not our road, it's the county's road, and we won't issue you an access permit,” Bondurant said. “The county said it's a state highway, so they have to give you the permit. They fought for many, many months and would not give us an access permit.”
According to Bondurant, the quandary was “somewhat resolved” when the state finally wrote a letter to Mineral County.
“The county seemed like they accepted the fact that it was their obligation to give us the access permit,” he said. “But that never happened.”
What happened was the subdivision was denied because of the bridge and its weight limit.
“They said fire trucks and concrete trucks couldn't get there,” Bondurant said.
The transportation department has a plan, state director Jim Lynch said. In 2011, a $1.9-million interchange will be built to circumvent the Scenic Bridge, which will be abandoned. The interchange will be less than a mile west of the Fish Creek exit.
At roughly the same time, MDT will spend $50 million to rebuild the state's other structurally deficient steel-deck truss bridge across the Two Medicine River in north-central Montana.
The 1932 Cyr Bridge has even more issues. It too is a steel-deck truss bridge with an 11-ton limit. Parts of its concrete guardrail have completely disintegrated, though the rest is rated either fair or satisfactory.
The bridge looms above the popular launching pad for floaters in the Alberton Gorge.
“The problem with that one is just so many people use it,” Stang said. “I mean, it's an access right off the interstate.”
Two proposed subdivisions would use the Cyr Bridge, Read said. The 71-lot Mountain River Estates on the Clark Fork River has gained preliminary plat approval and will pay the county mitigation fees for use of the Cyr Bridge.
Mullan Ridge Estates, a contentious 58-lot subdivision south of Interstate 90 on Juniper Road, was approved by commissioners this spring after the county planning commission recommended denial. The commissioners' action resulted in a lawsuit over easement access that has yet to be resolved.
The question of ownership of highways and bridges isn't new, and it's not restricted to Mineral County. Lynch said this is the first of its kind he's dealt with since taking the directorship at MDT in 2005.
“We just have to do some research,” he said. “Old Highway 10 West has been maintained by the county for 40-some years - snow removal, crack filling, chip sealing, pothole repairs, all that.”
And Mineral County nominated the Scenic Bridge for replacement, another indication of ownership.
“I would think the way in which the road has been operated, handled and maintained, it tells you the county has been doing this for years. From someone on the outside of this looking back, that tells me there's got to be a reason for that,” Lynch said.
Read first noticed the absence of a legal deed or right-of-way easement in the process of subdivision review. In directing developers to obtain encroachment or access permits, he had to figure out who to send them to, the county or the state.
“Right now, it's this mixture,” he said. “If you go out east of Superior, you go to MDT to get a permit to access the road. If you go west of town, it's the county. But it's kind of informal.”
Such ambivalence doesn't work with updated subdivision regulations, Stang said.
“There are so many subdivisions and so much activity, with our new regs we can't write approach permits on something that belongs to the Department of Transportation,” she said. “We have subdividers, and they're waiting. The Department of Transportation is saying, ‘Hey, this stuff doesn't belong to us,' but legally it really does. So we can't legally give permits for something that doesn't belong to us.
“This stuff needs to be straightened out, and it sounds like Mr. Lynch is willing to try to come sit down with the county and figure it out.”
He is, Lynch said. But his staff is still in the process of researching the ownership question.
One thing they're looking at is what's called the Road Log, legislation passed in July of 1976 that mapped out which roads the state would maintain. Subsequent additions to and subtractions from the list add complications to the research, said Levis.
So does the volume. There are 73,000 miles of public roads to account for in Montana, 11,000 of which are maintained by MDT.
Meanwhile, Mineral County has all it can handle. Years ago, the county established a policy not to accept new roads, except in rare circumstances. For a long time, timber receipts were a major source of Mineral County's road funding. That source has “dwindled dramatically,” County Attorney Shaun Donovan pointed out.
“Unfortunately, that comes along at the same time we're having all these developments in the outlying areas of the county, and there's an interest in and, in a lot of respects, a need for more roads,” he said. “The county has its hands full just maintaining the roads we've got.”
As for the bridges, it's going to take a combined effort to save them. Counties are eligible for federal bridge money, but Read believes it'll take a combined effort by the county, state and federal government to bring the Cyr Bridge up to snuff in time for it to matter.
Heavy loads headed for Alberton Gorge or nearby subdivisions from the east are expected to avoid the bridge and use the Fish Creek access, “but I can't patrol that, and the county can't patrol that.”
“We just hope people are responsible. If someone ever sees somebody violating the load limit, let us know,” Lynch said. “Mineral County and the state of Montana, give both a call.”
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