Basnight sends Bonner Bridge plea to the president

Calling it “a shocking matter of safety and security,” state Sen. President Marc Basnight has sent a letter to President Obama imploring him to cut through the red tape and get the Bonner Bridge replacement project moving.

The Dare County Democrat told the president “the only person who can resolve it is you.”

Multiple state and federal agencies had signed off on the project until last month, when another study was ordered, this time to examine the potential impact of future work on N.C. 12.

The study has delayed the project another year. Meanwhile, maintenance running in the millions of dollars has been performed on the old bridge over Oregon Inlet.

“Imagine for a moment a busload of school children traveling across the bridge,” Basnight write.  “When the bus reaches the apex of the bridge’s 3.3-mile span, the road collapses, sending the bus and all of the children into the water below.  While this image is horrific, it is indeed possible. Thankfully, it is also avoidable – if the federal government acts now to remove all further obstacles and delays, so that construction may finally begin.”

Discussions on replacing the bridge started in 1996.

Basnight blamed the delays on “a government that is more worried about the litigious threats of out-of-state environmental groups than about the public safety and economic well-being of the millions of motorists” and said the new bridge could have been built 10 years ago at the fraction of the estimated $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion it would cost now.

The state Department of Transportation had decided to build a new bridge parallel to the existing one and about the same 2.4-mile length. Later, smaller bridges and other work to deal with hotspots vulnerable to ocean overwash along N.C. 12 could be done as needed. But environmental groups favor a 17-mile-long bridge that would bypass the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

In his letter, Basnight cited the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis that killed more than a dozen people and said that the old Bonner Bridge had received a safety rating of two out of 100.

“The bridge has fallen into the water already – as far back as 1983, Bonner Bridge was closed for damage repair when a span began to sag and had to be reinforced,” Bansight wrote. ”In 1990, hurricane-force winds blew a dredge barge into the bridge, knocking out a center section of the span.  Thankfully, no one was injured – but thousands of permanent residents of Hatteras were cut off from the mainland for four months except by air and ferry.  During storms and nor’easters, high winds and visibility problems make crossing the bridge even more precipitous.”

See the full text of the letter »

Related: Bonner Bridge replacement delayed again »

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