FAYETTEVILLE -- Washington County officials are reaching out to the state government to wade into concerns over inadequate construction of county bridges.
Washington County Judge Marilyn Edwards asked the state Tuesday to inspect several bridges built over the past two decades, while several justices of the peace joined the call for the state attorney general to investigate the county Road Department's construction of bridges.
Sue Madison, a Democrat, and Republicans Rick Cochran, Harvey Bowman, Tom Lundstrum, Lisa Ecke and Joel Maxwell sent a letter dated April 10 to Cory Cox, legislative director for Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, asking for an investigation into whether construction problems affecting at least one county bridge are widespread. Eva Madison, a Democrat and Sue Madison's daughter, first made such a request at the beginning of this month.
"We are concerned that if the Attorney General's office does not investigate, we will never know, and therefore the public will never know, how this situation with our bridges got so out of hand and how far-ranging the problem is," the Quorum Court members wrote. "We need the assistance of an outside agency, like your office, because the County cannot investigate itself."
A spokesman for Rutledge didn't return a request for comment by deadline Tuesday. The attorney general's office has been reviewing Eva Madison's request and hasn't yet responded.
Cochran said he was "disturbed" by the lack of an answer from Rutledge and hoped a chorus of voices would push the attorney general to make a decision.
"The question, I believed, needed to be asked of them: Are you going to do anything?" he said Tuesday.
Questions over county bridges and how safe they are have swirled for months. A Road Department employee sued Edwards, a Democrat, and Road Department supervisors late last year, claiming he was harassed for pointing out Stonewall and Harvey Dowell bridges weren't being built safely. Edwards oversees the department.
Last month Edwards released a video showing Stonewall's steel reinforcement wasn't firmly attached to the concrete, apparently confirming at least some of the lawsuit's claims. The Road Department has since torn down Stonewall bridge, west of Prairie Grove, to rebuild it under the supervision of engineering firm GTS Inc. The Harvey Dowell bridge, southeast of Fayetteville, was placed under a three-ton weight limit.
"This whole bridge and road issue has sort of just laid out there dormant," Sue Madison, who represents District 12 in southeast Fayetteville, said Tuesday. "Suddenly the video kicked everything into high gear."
Edwards asked the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department to do an X-ray inspection of the Harvey Dowell bridge to check its internal steel reinforcement. The state inspected Harvey Dowell before it opened in late 2013, but only from the outside. The department generally inspects bridges every two years.
Edwards also asked the department to inspect every bridge built in the county in the past 20 years, saying the Road Department could provide a list of such bridges.
The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously asked for a list of bridges built under William Reed, who was county bridge supervisor from 2002 until he retired last month. Road Department officials told county attorney Steve Zega they didn't have the documentation necessary to answer the request, Zega said.
The 20-year list wasn't ready Tuesday but could be ready as soon as today, said Dan Short, Edwards' chief of staff.
"This is an attempt on the part of Judge Edwards to belay those fears and answer those questions," Short said. "That's a good starting point -- let's go back 20 years."
Throughout the controversy, Edwards and her employees have declined to respond to other officials' questions on who decided to deviate from the bridges' designs and how they were built, pointing to the need to defend against the lawsuit. Still, last month she asked Matt Durrett, 4th Judicial District prosecuting attorney, to investigate the issues. That request is on hold until the attorney general gives an answer, Zega said.
No one from the Road Department came to discuss the projects' impact on the Road Department's budget with the Quorum Court's finance committee last week. Cochran, who chairs the committee and asked for the meeting, called the department's absence a "slap in the face."
"My concerns are mounting in the sense of non-communication -- there's no transparency anymore," Cochran said. "The trust starts to slip away, and it bothers me."
After the finance meeting, Edwards said a sore throat kept her from the meeting, and the Road Department's assistant superintendent was attending his child's ball game. But she also said there wasn't a need to send anyone.
"I don't have anything to hide; we built a bridge, we made a mistake," Edwards said. "I just didn't feel like there was any sense in having a bunch of people asking the same questions."
NW News on 04/15/2015