Washington County's recent investigation into the construction of county bridges has concluded, blaming "an organizational failure" in the county road department for deficiencies in three bridges.
The county tackled the investigation itself, naming a panel of three to delve into the issue after structural questions were raised about two bridges, the unfinished Stonewall Bridge outside Prairie Grove and the Harvey Dowell Bridge near Fayetteville.
The investigation turned up a third span, this one over the Illinois River on Bethel Blacktop Road west of Farmington, with similar construction flaws.
All are deteriorating and will have shortened lifespans because crews improperly cast concrete and installed steel reinforcement wrong, according to the findings.
Eva Madison, a Fayetteville member of the Washington County Quorum Court, Assessor Russell Hill and Carl Gales, a private engineer, made up the panel asked by the Quorum Court and County Judge Marilyn Edwards to look into the matter.
They interviewed 16 former and current employees of the Road Department, reviewed work logs and inspected the bridges before reporting to the Quorum Court last week.
Employees failed to follow engineers' plans and Arkansas standards as they constructed the bridges. Nor did they follow proper safety procedures, Madison told her fellow court members.
"Let me be clear," Madison said, "Nobody (interviewed) was hiding the fact the plans were not followed.
"This was an organizational failure."
The investigators spread the blame throughout the department's leaders, asserting that employees lacked necessary training and equipment.
They also said there was confusion over who was in charge of construction and had the plans and that a department culture may have quashed questions and complaints, contributing to the mistakes.
"The biggest cause is because no one knew any better," Madison said. "They didn't have the knowledge, they didn't have the training, they didn't have the tools to build the bridges the county was asking them to build."
Madison also told court members that the county's employees want to do good work but that nobody stopped to ask whether the county has a bridge crew capable of building a bridge like these.
"We just assumed it," she said.
The internal investigation turned out to be a pretty stout indictment, one that County Judge Edwards said will require "a lot of soul-searching" on her part.
Edwards, as county judge, oversees the Road Department as part of her duties as the county's chief administrator. She has previously delegated much of that responsibility but is shouldering it now.
"I want to sit down with the report in front of me. I want to look at everything very carefully," Edwards told the Quorum Court.
This is a major challenge for her administration and requires a serious response.
Edwards reportedly spent much of last week in meetings with county personnel and others, working on a plan that she expects to present to the Quorum Court when it meets May 21.
The good news in this situation is that Edwards, who has long said this would be her last term, can focus on fixing the problems with the bridges and the road department and essentially ignore the politics.
That's good for Washington County.
The response not only must address what more, if anything, to do about these particular troubled spans but also must resolve how the county will build future bridges -- either contracting the work out or training its own people better and providing closer oversight.
Getting that done will be hard enough without any political back and forth.
For the record, the Stonewall Bridge is being rebuilt, although the project has been delayed. And load limits have been reduced on the Harvey Dowell Bridge.
Edwards must directly address the "organizational failure" within her administration but the challenge is larger than that.
As always, this will get down to how much the county is willing to spend to fix the situation.
Part of the underlying problem is that county road departments are traditional training grounds for heavy equipment workers and others, who learn enough at the counties' comparatively low wages to move on to better jobs with private companies.
Paying more might retain more skilled workers. But, if counties pay higher wages, they'll have less to buy materials to build the roads and bridges. But, if they contract the jobs out, they'll have to spend more for that, too.
And all of those decisions are wrapped in with the rest of an urban county's many other funding obligations.
So, while the administrative challenge is primarily Edwards' to solve, the larger work will also involve the Quorum Court in its role as keeper of the county purse.
Commentary on 05/10/2015