Walla Walla to perform $1.2M in maintenance to bridges

Nine of Walla Walla's bridges along Mill Creek, mostly historic, will undergo maintenance work this year to extend their lifespans.

Walla Walla City Council awarded the project to Combined Construction, a Mukilteo-based contractor, for the low bid of $1,241,649, at its Wednesday, April 22, meeting.

The funds for the project will come from a more than $2 million federal bridge grant that the city originally accepted in 2022. The grant was initially awarded for about $1.5 million, but the amount was increased last year.

Assistant City Engineer Monte Puymon said the grant was awarded by the Washington State Department of Transportation and is funded through the Federal Highway Administration.

"Most of these bridges are in excess of 100 years old, and we're doing a variety of maintenance on each of the bridges just depending on the conditions and needs," Puymon said. "So this is traditional maintenance, it's not rehabilitating the bridge structure. In other words, several of those bridges have load restrictions for heavier vehicles. This is not going to remove that restriction, but it is going to prevent the continued deterioration rate so that we keep the bridges in the condition that they're already in."

The primary goal of the project will be to maintain the structure of the bridges, Puymon said, which will include cleaning and re-encasing the steel rebar within the concrete. Workers also will do some crack repair, railing repair and bridge deck repair.

"This is about a $1.2 million contract. Compare that to the replacements of the bridges that we're doing next calendar year," Puymon said. "Fourth Avenue Bridge and Sixth Avenue Bridge are getting replaced. The total project cost is approaching $14 million for two bridges. We're maintaining nine bridges for less than one-tenth of that cost. So it's money well spent."

Puymon and council member Steve Moss said they could not remember the city doing this kind of preventative maintenance in the recent past.

" We do have a lot of bridges in the community and taking care of them is extremely important," Moss said. "I want to thank the staff for being proactive and reaching out for those resources and thank the federal government for making them available. Ultimately it saves us a lot of money in the long run."

Puymon told council members that it is tough to project how long these improvements will last, but that if Public Works keeps up with the preventative maintenance, the bridges should have "nearly an indefinite lifespan."

"We haven't maintained those (bridges) to the level that we need to, and that's why we're frequently replacing those structures," Puymon said. "And separate from that, if you think about bridges that are 100 years old, there was probably more horse traffic crossing them than vehicle traffic, so of course our loads have changed dramatically in that time span."

Construction is expected to start in May and be completed in October.

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