SUNRISE BEACH, Mo. - Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) and Camden County officials gripped a seven-handled spade early Friday morning and symbolically broke ground for the construction of a new Hurricane Deck Bridge across the Lake of the Ozarks.
The $32.3 million project will be the final step in replacing four of the original bridges that carried U.S. Highway 54 and Missouri 5 across the various arms of the lake.
The Hurricane Deck Bridge carries Missouri 5 across the main channel just south of the Sunrise Beach city limits on the west side of the lake. The 1,000-foot long, 77-year-old bridge will be replaced with a new structure that will have two, 10-foot wide lanes and 12-foot wide shoulders.
The other bridges across the Lake that have been replaced in the past two decades include the Grand Glaize Bridge in Osage Beach, the bridge that carries U.S. Highway 54 across the Niangua Arm of the lake west of Camdenton and the bridge that carries Missouri 5 across the Niangua Arm of the lake about 8 miles north of Camdenton.
The new Hurricane Deck structure will be built just three feet east of the current span by the American Bridge Company and will not necessitate the closing of the roadway during the construction period, except for brief periods. Missouri 5 will remain open to traffic throughout the yearlong construction period.
At the groundbreaking ceremony beneath the bridge, MoDOT Director Kevin Keith told the crowd it was hard to believe the bridge was in "as bad shape as it is until you come down here and look up."
Keith said replacement of the bridge was necessitated both by its condition and what it would cost MoDOT to repair the original structure, but it was only one of the more than 2,500 bridges in the state that are in need of replacement.
"Not a lot of people realize it," Keith said. "But this bridge is exactly the same kind of structure as the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed in Minnesota in 2006, killing 13 people."
"Still there are so many bridges in the state that need to be replaced that we would have to replace two a year every year even if we built each one to last 100 years and there just isn't enough funding to do that," Keith added. "This is the only bridge of this size that will be replaced this year."
Preliminary work on the new bridge has already begun as crews are mounting large cranes onto barges that will be used as platforms for sinking pilings into the lake's bottom.
The new bridge is expected to open to traffic by the end of 2013, with another six months construction time allotted for demolishing the old span.