Wayne Allen

PDT Staff Writer

In December the Ohio Department of Transportation reported an oversized vehicle had struck an overpass on County Road (C.R.) 7 (Junior Furnace-Powellsville Road) at U.S. Route 52 in Scioto County causing structural damage.

ODOT held a bid opening on a job that would fix the damage Thursday.

According to Kathleen Fuller, ODOT District 9 spokeswoman, the apparent low bidder on the project is Civil Construction Company of Plain City, Ohio with a bid of just under $160,000.

“It’s not official because we just had bid leading yesterday (Thursday), which means we just opened bids on this and a whole lot of other projects throughout the state,” Fuller said. “We have an apparent low bidder for the job. A contract has not been awarded, that will come in the next couple of weeks.”

At the time of the incident, Fuller described the damage to the bridge as being to the, “support beams on the outside edges of the bridge. The center beam is fine but the outside beams have been compromised.”

Fuller said the beams on the outside edges of the bridge have been bent as a result of being struck by an unknown over-sized vehicle.

“The overpass is still structurally sound but there has been some damage to a couple of the support beams,” Fuller said.

She said the scope of the project will include a heat straightening process to repair the damage done to the bridge.

“A contractor will have to do a heat straightening project, we’ve done these before when we get bridges that are damaged, this is a very typical project,” Fuller said. “We did this type of project in Lawrence County last year.”

She said it’s still uncertain what actually struck the bridge causing the damage.

“We are assuming it was an over height vehicle of some sort,” Fuller said.

Fuller said there has been no damage to U.S. 52. She said County Road 7 has been reopened to one lane of traffic.

“We put up a temporary signal, we are going to move traffic to the center of the bridge. Because, it was only the outside beams that were bent or damaged. We can safely reopen that center lane,” Fuller said.

She said the bridge will stay one lane until they can get a project to get it repaired.

The bridge, which is situated on C.R. 7, crosses over U.S. 52 at the route’s 35.72-mile marker near Franklin Furnace approximately four miles west of the Scioto-Lawrence County line.

She said construction is slated to being this spring with a completion of July.

Wayne Allen may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 228, or tallen@civitasmedia.com