UMATILLA COUNTY — Umatilla County is waiting on bids to come in for the project to replace Thorn Hollow Bridge.

Umatilla County Commissioner George Murdock in his weekly update on April 5 reported, “Each step toward replacement is good news. Bridges are difficult issues to deal with. They are critical to transportation routes … very expensive to replace, and the regulations surrounding their replacement provide a mountain of red tape.”

The bridge spans the Umatilla River about 10 miles southeast of Adams. The flooding of February 2020 rendered the bridge impassable.

The Athena-Weston school bus route crosses the bridge, which is the main access point to Highway 11 for people living up and down the river from Thorn Hollow. The closest alternate crossing is about 5 miles west near Cayuse.

County Commissioner Dan Dorran said when the bids are in, demolition can proceed.

“We’re on a tight schedule, because of the water window,” he added. “But if everything goes well, work could be completed by July to August.”

The six-week “in-stream work window,” is intended to minimize the potential impacts of demolition and rebuilding on fish, wildlife and habitat. Last year, officials said the work window made it impossible to complete the project in less than two construction seasons.

“If all the permits are completed,” Dorran concluded, “then construction could start next year.”

Original schedules suggested the bridge would take up to seven years to fix. Costs were estimated at around $5 million. But in a press conference on March 10, 2021, county and state officials said that if all went well, what was left of the road could be demolished as early as that year. They hoped construction could start in 2023, four years earlier than previously thought.

However, the plan to demolish the flood-damaged bridge in 2021 did not pan out. But, as Dorran noted, replacement still could commence in 2023.

Last year, county officials worked with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Oregon Department of Transportation to make the new plans with funding from the state. Dorran then said the county also received support from politicians, including Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, as well as state Sen. Bill Hansell of Athena and state Rep. Bobby Levy of Echo.

“This is a project that has been on our radar since the floods last year,” Ken Patterson, an area manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said at the March 2021 press conference.

The bridge’s location on tribal land meant the project wouldn’t ordinarily fall to ODOT, Patterson said. But with the insistence of county officials, Oregon personnel found a way to allocate state resources toward repairing the bridge more quickly.

At that time, Umatilla County Public Works Director Tom Fellows said officials made plans to remove the bridge earlier, while simultaneously designing the new bridge.

Funding for the bridge replacement originally comes from the federal level, but “trickles down” to become state money. This provides an opportunity to “take savings from one project and move it over to another project,” Fellows said in 2021.

The state, therefore, pays about 89.7% of costs, Patterson said.

Umatilla County will cover about 10.3% of the project’s overall costs, Dorran said. He added the county also has to cover any “early overages.”

Fellows said the main goal of the project was to shorten its timeline.

Whether the damaged bridge will be demolished this year or not, local residents won’t have to wait until 2027 to again cross the river at Thorn Hollow.