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Midland residents celebrate new temporary bridge

"Flowing Water on the Brandywine Creek" by the bridge is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Nearly ten months after flood waters washed away a heavily-traveled bridge north of Midland, people today [THURS] celebrated the opening of a new temporary bridge.

“Go left....”

Carrying wind-whipped flags, residents of Edenville and Wixom Lake walked across the temporary bridge connecting their communities.

This is the last of 26 state projects fixing bridges and washed out roads from last May’s devastating floods in Midland and Gladwin counties. 

John Blades is a Tobacco Township trustee.  He says restoring this bridge is important to their residents who lost so much after the major dam failure last Spring.

“It’s just psychological to see things moving forward," said Blades. "Because obviously the next step will be getting our water back.”

Blades is talking about restoring the largely empty Wixom Lake. But right now there is no timetable for doing that.

Steve Carmody has been a reporter for Michigan Public since 2005.