By JIMMY LAWTON

CANTON – St. Lawrence County would need to spend $285 million over the next decade in order to fix its deficient bridges, roads and culverts, according to a county highway department report.

St. Lawrence County Highway Committee Chairman Donald Peck says the problem has been a long time coming and continues to get worse.

“It’s not a new problem. This has been going on for the past 20 years,” he said.

Peck said a lack of foresight and investment has left the county with a problem that has snowballed into a state of disrepair that will take years to fix.

“It’s not something we can deal with in a budget season. It’s going to take a long time to get where we need to be,” he said.

Bridging the Gap

A St. Lawrence County Highway Department report shows 40 percent of the county’s bridges are currently deficient.

The highway department’s report estimates the county needs to invest $3.1 million into bridge replacements each year to maintain the deficiency rate of 40 percent. The county needs to invest $9.3 million per year for the next decade to bring its bridge inventory to non-deficient state.

It would also require an additional $3.7 million per year in maintenance costs.

Highway Superintendent Donald Chambers said cutbacks to staff of roughly 20 percent in the last decade and funding shortfalls are responsible for the growing problem.

He said three bridges in St. Lawrence County were permanently closed this year with no intention of reopening.

“That is a large number of bridges to close in one year,” he said

Peck said a similar study was done in 1994. In that study, county legislators were warned that by 2010, it would take roughly $50 million over a 10-year period to close the maintenance-funding gap.

Peck said past boards were informed that the budgeted funding was not sustainable, but despite the warnings, the highway budget was trimmed, he said.

“It’s low hanging fruit,” he said.

The 1994 study said the county would need a minimum of $430,000 per year to correct the deficient bridges. Since 1994, the year average funding has been only $380,000 per year.

This year’s report estimates the $50 million gap has grown to $106 million.

Peck said there is no easy solution. He said the problem took decades to create and won’t be fixed in the upcoming budget.

The bridges closed this year include Bridge Street in Pyrites, LaFaver Road in Russell and the Old State Road in the Town of Fine.

Chambers said closing bridges will likely become more common over the next decade if more funding isn’t provided for maintenance and construction.

“We are not necessarily closing bridges that are deemed deficient. It means there are issues with the structure and they are in need of rehabilitation or replacement. Each year we have to look and determine if they need to be closed or weight restricted,” he said.

Chambers said restrictions on weight are inevitable without additional funding and that can cause problems for the county’s many farmers, truckers and emergency responders.

“It’s a significant issue for delivery of emergency services. If we have weight restrictions they would be severely impacted,” he said.

Troubled Roads

Chambers said keeping up roads and bridges in a rural county is no simple task.

He said the county is responsible for more than 200 bridges and 504 miles of roads. Chambers said 70 percent, or 407, of the county’s roads have sub-base deficiencies and 30 percent or 120 miles have major deficiencies.

“It’s not that the county hasn’t been trying. We have been replacing bridges and roads, but the age and condition of our inventory is relatively old and that causes quite a problem.”

And while there are counties with even more roads and bridges, St. Lawrence County is near the top. He said the North Country’s relatively low tax base makes funding the high number of bridges and roads even tougher.

Correcting the deficiencies and maintaining the roads would cost an estimated $18.4 million per year for the next decade.

Chambers said a major problem with St. Lawrence County’s roads is that they weren’t originally designed for the amount and weight of traffic they receive. He said county roads need to be completely rebuilt to meet the needs of modern trucks, tractors and volume of drivers.

To accomplish this, the county is targeting the most deteriorated roads and rebuilding them rather than milling and repaving them. He said the cost is too high to universally tackle the issue, but little by little the county’s roads are being updated.

“It would be preferable to bring them all up to modern standards, but at this point there isn’t funding for reconstruction. We are focusing on areas that have been seeing severe deterioration and reconstructing those when repaving is not an acceptable choice,” he said.

Culvert Operations

St. Lawrence County’s problems aren’t limited to bridges and roads. Chambers said the county has nearly 260 large culverts and about 20 percent of them are deficient. The county also has 2,128 small culverts that need to be maintained.

The annual maintenance cost for culverts is estimated at $579,300

Although the picture of St. Lawrence County’s public works may look grim, Chambers said that it is not unique.

“Unfortunately it’s kind of the norm. If you look at data around the country you will see the same thing. There has not been enough investment infrastructure,” he said.

Paying for Pavement

Peck said he has proposed borrowing money to put more money into the county’s roads and bridges, but added that there isn’t much support by his fellow legislators to borrow funding. The county has had to borrow money for the past four consecutive years to ensure it has enough cash flow to pay the bills.

“We don’t have a clear plan. We need to invest money, but we also need to stay within the tax cap,” he said.

Peck said he expects the upcoming budget process to be difficult. With last year’s passage of a 1 percent increase in sales tax and some money coming in from the casino compact, the county has pledged to stay under the state imposed tax cap and replenish its fund balance.

Peck said the additional money won’t likely go far. He said the compact money has to be used for economic development and highways may be a hard sell.

“It’s something I think we will look at, but that money is pretty much for economic development,” he said.

The $285 million cost needed over the next decade was calculated using $184 million to reconstruct and maintain roadways, $93 million for bridge reconstruction, $4 million for culvert construction, $37 million for bridge maintenance and $6 million for culvert maintenance. Although that equals $324 million, about $39 million from Consolidated Highway Improvement Program funds expected over the next decade leaves the county’s share at $285 million.