A decades old bridge in Sanford, Michigan is one step closer to being replaced.
The Saginaw Road bridge crosses the Tittabawassee River and plays an essential role in connecting one side of the village to the other.
After more than 10 years of fundraising, the village has secured $10.4 million for the reconstruction of the bridge.
Village President, Delores Porte, said the village received $9.4 in funding from the Local Bridge Advisory Board, and U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, secured $955,000 in federal funds for the project.
“We need about another $2 million, and we're applying for that right now,” Porte said. “So, we are very, very close to having all of the money.”
Porte said the long-term goal as always been to replace the bridge, but damage from the four lakes dam system failure in 2020 caused the road approaching the bridge to collapse, making the bridge completely inaccessible.
“We needed to do something immediately because our town was on one side of the bridge and our emergency services, our fire department, was on the other,” Porte said.
Porte said the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funded those replacements.
Other temporary fixes have kept the bridge safe throughout the years.
“We've had to do some short-term repairs on expansion joints in order to keep it open,” Porte said. “So, what you're doing is, you know, throwing good money at a bad bridge."
This is one of many infrastructure repairs the village has made following the Edenville dam failure of 2020. The Sanford Dam, and most of the village's downtown and several homes have been rebuilt.
David Kepler, the president of Four Lakes Task Force said the newly built Sanford dam has more spillway capacity than the old dam.
“As the water would increase in a flood period, then the dam, the spillways would open up more,” Kepler said. “So, the water would flow at the same kind of rate as coming into the river.”
Kepler said the goal was to keep the water flow at a natural pace without creating a “risk in the system.”
Carl Hamann, a village councilman and longtime Sanford resident, is worried that with the right rain conditions, the new dam could create water levels that are too tall and wide for current road bridge’s current engineering.
“If we don't build this so that water can pass through that bridge and get downstream, and we have another major rain event,” Hamann said, “that [water] can travel up to the village and destroy the downtown village.”
Hamann said several Sanford residents and businesses owners rebuilt after the flood.
“These people are double mortgaged and probably won't live long enough to ever see that debt. I know I can't,” Hamann said. “But there will be such a catastrophic failure again. I have a fear that this town won't exist through another flood. So, we try to do what we can to try to prevent that.”
Hamann said he’s concerned that the village will need additional funding to execute a bridge that meets his standards.
“It takes time to put all this together, and time is a very, very precious commodity, because sometimes you run out of it,” Hamann said. “Most of us here in the Saginaw, Bay City, Midland, Gladwin area are aware of how time can elude and all a sudden you're in a catastrophe. And that's my concern about the bridge.”
Porte said the engineering of the road bridge took data from the Four Lakes Task Force into account.
Kepler said the company will run simulations to see how the village and its infrastructure could be impacted by different flood levels with the new dam — but those tests are yet to come.
“We are going to do the best design for the bridge to prevent a flood, if possible,” Porte said. “But we're in a floodplain. So whenever you're in a floodplain, there's never 100% assurance.”
