BENTONVILLE — Benton County has two major bridge projects under way, with more to come next year and beyond, officials said.

“It’s been a long fight,” Kurt Moore, justice of the peace for District 13, said of replacing Fisher Ford and Colonel Meyers bridges.

The state ordered Colonel Meyers Bridge over Osage Creek closed in May 2008 because it lacked structural integrity. The bridge was built in 1911. Fisher Ford Bridge was built in 1903 and has been closed since April 2005.

The state Highway and Transportation Department opened bids in September to replace the Colonel Meyers Bridge. Of the three bids, the low bid of $1,113,274 came from Iowa Bridge Co., according to information from the Highway Department. The bridge is being replaced as a state aid project. State and federal money will cover 98 percent of the cost, according to County Judge Bob Clinard.

The bid was about 13 percent more than the initial estimate, but the state could accept bids between 10 percent and 20 percent more than the estimate if Clinard agreed, which he did. Work on the bridge began in November. The contract is for 125 working days, which typically stretches out to 12 to 18 months to complete, according to the Highway Department.

Justice of the Peace Tom Allen said reopening Colonel Meyers Bridge will be beneficial to local residents and others as well.

“There’s not a tremendous amount of people that live out there, but it is important to them,” Allen said. “That bridge being closed has required them to go out of their way to get to work, to go shopping and to do other things. It’s also a life safety issue. With the bridge closed it could take longer for fire trucks or an ambulance to reach someone in case of an emergency.”

Having Colonel Meyers Road open again will also take some traffic off other roads, Allen said.

“It can be a nice alternate route to the airport instead of having to go through the city of Cave Springs,” Allen said. “It can take some of the pressure off Highway 112.”

The state awarded the contract on the Fisher Ford Bridge over the Illinois River in late November, Clinard said. The project also will use federal money to pay 80 percent of the construction, Clinard said. The county will be responsible for 20 percent of the $1,039,883 in construction costs, plus $384,000 in engineering costs. The initial estimate of construction cost on that project was $1,077,394.

The work on Fisher Ford Bridge should begin late this month or early in January and take about a year to complete, Clinard said.

Moore said he’s glad the work on Fisher Ford Bridge will be done even though he had hoped it would begin about six months sooner.

“I had been hoping it would be done in mid or late summer. But I’m happy that it’s being done at all. It’s been a long fight,” he said.

Moore said there are other bridges in his district that need work, and he plans to monitor the county’s plans for bridge work. Terry Nalley, county public services administrator who oversees the Road Department, said there are three major bridge replacement projects on the county’s work schedule for 2014. The county plans to replace the Stage Coach Road Bridge, at a cost of about $115,000, Nalley said. Wildcat Bridge on old Highway 68 will also be replaced at an estimated cost of $1,225,000, he said.

“Right now, we’re looking at getting state aid to help with design work for Wildcat and Stage Coach,” Nalley said.

The county also plans to replace Corinth Road Bridge, which was completely washed away in the August flooding that hit the county, Nalley said. That project will cost about $60,000. The county is looking at an alternative to the traditional bridge-building methods for Corinth Road, Nalley said.

“We’re looking at a couple of companies that have said they can do a ‘drop-in’ bridge for Corinth Road,” Nalley said. “One of the companies I’ve talked to said they will design it and build it. It will come in pieces in trucks and then we put it together like a jigsaw puzzle. We bolt it down and put some asphalt over it. It may cost a little bit more, but according to the company I’ve talked to it’s much faster. They had one project, it was a city bridge, they told me they literally took the other one out and put this in place in a day. It was a long day, but it was done in one day. If we do it this way our bridge crews could do the work and it could be done in a couple of days or a week instead of months like Fisher Ford or Colonel Meyers.”

Allen said he thinks the county needs to be more systematic in evaluating, maintaining and replacing bridges when needed. He suggested the county could use a portion of its share of a special state sales tax for transportation needs to do bridge work and also to up grade the county’s fleet of heavy equipment needed to work on bridges and county roads.

“I think we need to take care of what we’ve got before we embark on any ambitious paving program,” Allen said. “Even though we’re getting a pretty significant amount of money from the sales tax it won’t take care of everything. It’s my opinion you need to take care of your bridges. We don’t want county bridges collapsing or being closed. And we do need equipment to do the work and to maintain the roads. We need to look at buying good equipment that will last and get on a regular schedule of replacing older equipment. I’d rather see us focus on chip and seal for the roads than do more asphalt paving. Chip and seal will last if we take care of it. I’m not an expert on roads and I’ll defer to the Road Department, but I don’t think we can be too aggressive in paving a lot of roads.”