County won't pursue grant to remove Red Bridge

The Flathead County Commissioners agreed not to pursue a federal grant to pay for removing the Red Bridge in Columbia Falls at their March 8 meeting.

The county planning department had pursued a Hazard Mitigation Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which became available after a federal disaster was declared in Montana during last spring’s floods.

A concern was that the bridge could be knocked off its tilted middle pier and fall into the Flathead River during another high spring runoff. Large debris in the river might then accumulate against the bridge and potentially dam the river, causing flooding.

Planning director B.J. Grieve said his office was “given the green light to proceed” with the FEMA application by the State of Montana Department of Military Affairs Disaster and Emergency Services Division.

County planners ran into a problem, however, when using FEMA’s standard software as part of the application’s required cost-benefit analysis. They had obtained an estimate for the removal cost in January from HDR Engineering, in Missoula, but the FEMA software didn’t address bridge removal.

“The planning office spent approximately three weeks trying to make our proposal fit into this software,” Grieve reported to the commissioners.

At one point, FEMA said bridge removal might not qualify because “it could be interpreted as a maintenance matter,” Grieve said.

On Feb. 17, a FEMA environmental compliance officer raised questions about HDR Engineering’s estimate — and the historical significance of the bridge.

Unbeknownst to the commissioners, the Red Bridge was listed on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 2010. The bridge was nominated for the list by Montana Department of Transportation historian Jon Axline on Aug. 19, 2009.

According to Grieve, John Boughton, a state historical preservation officer at the Montana Historical Society, sent the commissioners a letter on Dec. 16, 2009, requesting comments on Axline’s nomination. The letter may have slipped through the cracks, and a response was not required, Grieve suggested.

Saying the county’s proposed project was “one of the most unique and complex hazard mitigation grant projects they’d seen,” FEMA requested additional information:

• Since the hazard had never occurred, FEMA wanted the county to create a computer model to simulate the potential hazard.

• FEMA also wanted an engineered structural analysis to determine the probability of bridge failure by a 20-year, 50-year and 100-year flood.

• And FEMA wanted the county to quantify the alternatives for its cost-benefit analysis. Potential benefits of not removing the bridge included historical preservation, pedestrian access, less impacts to the channel and river bank, and safer routes for school children.

Grieve told the commissioners the amount of additional work required by FEMA could not be completed by the March 30 deadline, and the cost of the additional work “is difficult to justify since it may simply demonstrate that the project doesn’t qualify.”

He noted that with FEMA’s additional concerns about environmental remediation and historical significance, the grant was not likely to be approved or would become “an ongoing challenge for years to come.”

Grieve emphasizes that the commissioners are “committed to addressing the liability issues of the Red Bridge in the most cost-efficient way possible, whether it’s restoring or removing the bridge.”