There’s no money to fix older bridges between MS Coast and Louisiana. Is a new plan viable?

The state isn’t any closer to finding the hundreds of millions of dollars it will take to replace a series of closed bridges along a stretch of U.S. 90 linking Louisiana and Mississippi.

But the Louisiana highway department did recently put out a notice asking if anybody is interested in removing the old bridges, which are historic, for use somewhere else.

Since the Pearl River bridges are in Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s Historic Bridge Inventory , the state would even cover the removal costs with federal money from a program that aims to find new uses for historic bridges, a highway department spokesperson said.

Declaring them structurally unsound, the state closed the bridges in May 2022, effectively closing that stretch of the highway, commonly known as Highway 90.

Drivers who used the roadway, as well as several St. Tammany Parish elected officials, have urged DOTD to speed the process to reopen or replace the bridges allow drivers to once again use the highway.

Some lawmakers have pointed out that Highway 90 is a vital artery for hurricane evacuation or when Interstate 10 is closed.

While traffic counts through that stretch of highway show only a few thousand vehicles used it daily as of 2021, the highway was a popular route from St. Tammany to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for some drivers.

But DOTD has said replacing the bridges will be very expensive — upwards of $350 million — and the money isn’t there at this point.

But in a recent notice, DOTD said the four bridges, which date to the 1930s, are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places as well as a program that opens federal money for “adaptive re-use,” i.e., removing them and using them for other things, such as museum pieces or fishing piers somewhere else.

“You can have the bridge for free and we will cut you a check (for removal costs),” said Daniel Gitlin, a DOTD spokesperson.

One caveat: The bridges cannot be demolished and sold as scrap. There are other requirements, too, of course , and DOTD must vet any proposal.

Gitlin isn’t sure how much interest there will be in adapting the bridges for another use, but said DOTD wanted to give it a try. While DOTD’s projected cost of removing the bridges — $520,000 each — is a “drop in the bucket,” any money the state can save helps, he said.

“You have to take out the old bridges before you can build new ones,” he said. “Where do you find funding to get this done? This could be a way. A win-win.”

If nobody comes forward with an accepted offer to remove the bridges, DOTD will remove them and dispose of them, Gitlin said.

A timetable for any project to replace the bridges, meanwhile, remains undetermined, Gitlin said.