Council weighs bridge replacement or removal

Washington’s City Council will conduct a public hearing next week concerning the fate of the Charlotte Street bridge.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Monday as part of the council’s regular meeting. The council wants the public’s input on what to do with the bridge.

At its Jan. 23 meeting, the council rejected the recommendation of Allen Lewis, the city’s public-works director, to replace the Charlotte Street bridge — or remove it altogether — to improve drainage in the Jack’s Creek basin.

Lewis told the council that without replacing the existing culverts or tearing down the bridge, ongoing efforts to improve drainage farther upstream in Jack’s Creek would go “for naught.” He said the Charlotte Street bridge becomes a bottleneck when Jack’s Creek is swollen with stormwater runoff and/or floodwaters. He warned that bottleneck, during a major rainfall or hurricane, could result in significant flooding of properties adjacent to Jack’s Creek.

“Long story short, one of two things have got to take place, in my mind anyway from an engineering standpoint. We need to either replace the culverts underneath Charlotte Street, which is going to run you in the neighborhood of $800,000 to a million dollars, or take them out and open the creek up,” Lewis said then.

Mayor Archie Jennings questioned the need to do anything with the Charlotte Street bridge at present or in the near future.

“Wouldn’t it be just as reasonable while Charlotte Street is still a viable bridge to continue using it as is and address either the replacement of Charlotte Street or the taking out of Charlotte Street when it’s no longer a functioning bridge?” Jennings said then. “In other words, should we be in a big hurry to tear out a bridge that’s still working?”

“You’re one significant storm away from having flooding issues because of the Charlotte Street culverts being undersized,” Lewis replied.

The three 60-inch-diameter culverts (corrugated metal pipes) installed under the Charlotte Street bridge years ago are inadequate when it comes to handling the increased stormwater runoff in Washington, Lewis told the council at the Jan. 23 meeting. Those aging, round culverts should be replaced with four 8-foot-by-80-foot box culverts to better handle stormwater runoff and floodwaters, Lewis said.

Replacing the Charlotte Street culverts is part of the current $3.8 million construction project to improve drainage in the Jack’s Creek basin. At the Jan. 23 meeting, Mercer made a motion to have the Charlotte Street bridge part of the project removed from project. Mayor Pro Tempore Bobby Roberson seconded the motion. After the issue was further discussed, Mercer withdrew his motion. That discussion included consideration of deferring the Charlotte Street bridge part of the project.