{"id":1730,"date":"2013-03-30T18:07:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T01:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2013-05-02T14:40:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T21:40:23","slug":"protecting-oregons-historic-goodpasture-covered-bridge-over-the-mckenzie-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/protecting-oregons-historic-goodpasture-covered-bridge-over-the-mckenzie-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting or Not Protecting Oregon’s Historic Goodpasture Covered Bridge over the McKenzie River"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Goodpasture<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Goodpasture Bridge – After the Renovation.<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

By Scott Rohter, March 2013<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Now that the repair work on the historic Goodpasture Covered Bridge is done, our Lane County Board of Commissioners should start\u00a0considering how to best\u00a0protect the bridge and the taxpayer\u2019s investment in the newly renovated bridge.. However since they really didn’t spend much\u00a0local taxpayer money,\u00a0they enjoy the luxury of having a certain amount of insulation from the cause and effect of the deliberate heavy use of this bridge by commercial logging operations. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Personally I don\u2019t want to see my historic\u00a0covered bridge over the McKenzie River which is an official Oregon State treasure misused like it has been in the past by letting long lines of logging trucks loaded for bear,\u00a0speed by my house on the way to crossing over this little wooden bridge with their 80,000 pound payloads of logs ready to go to the market. These heavy loads test the maximum allowable weight limit on the bridge about sixteen times a day. If our Board of Commissioners and Lane County allow them to do it, they will take advantage of any load limit that is placed on the bridge… I personally don\u2019t want\u00a0our historic wooden bridge to be used anymore for that type of constant heavy traffic. I think that only occasional heavy loads which are necessary for the residents who live up here should be allowed over the bridge in the future… <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The reason for the Bridge Restoration Project was because civil engineers discovered a slight sagging in the middle of the Bridge..\u00a0 Instead of being higher in the middle than it was on both ends as it should have been, it was actually about 4 inches lower\u00a0in the middle of the span. That was not good, and it was\u00a0getting worse so in addition to reducing the load limit on the bridge while\u00a0 contemplating their options, and replacing the roof with new wooden shingles to make it lighter, our Lane County Board of Commissioners \u00a0decided on a two million dollar major renovation project to \u201ctune up the bridge\u201d. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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What that means exactly is that they cut two sections out of the wooden plank floor on either side of the deck to accommodate two rows of temporary steel trusses that were assembled and bolted in place to cover the full span of 170 feet across the McKenzie River\u2026\u00a0 These steel trusses\u00a0held the full weight of the roof while work was being done on the main floor beams so they could be straightened. Then they strung about half a dozen thick steel cables about one inch in diameter\u00a0along both sides of the two outer floor beams. They were secured to the beams by steel plates which were bolted to the inside and outside of each beam with holes through which the steel cables passed. Then they\u00a0tightened the cables with a pneumatic powered machine\u2026 That strengthened the wooden beams. Then the bridge itself\u00a0was raised in the middle by tightening various vertical \u201changer rods\u201d which are positioned at precise intervals along the span. It was just like pulling the drawstring of a bow. When it was done\u00a0 it was\u00a0held in place\u00a0by the vertical hanger rods and the steel re-enforcing cables.\u00a0It put a positive arch back in the middle of the previously sagging wooden bridge. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The project was 90% paid for by a Federal Highway Grant and it cost about two-million dollars. The rest of the cost was picked up by Lane County taxpayers. They also installed some lighting on the bridge when they were done so it could be seen better at night\u2026 Don\u2019t ask me why. \u00a0I am not sure if that was a very wise expenditure of public funds just to light the bridge at night, but it does look very pretty though. Someone\u00a0obviously thinks there is\u00a0plenty of government money to go around, right?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Now that they are all done the Lane County Commissioners have to decide what the new posted load limit on the bridge should be. It has been set at\u00a010 tons for the past year in order to prevent from doing any further damage to the bridge\u2026 There is a County Commissioners meeting scheduled for sometime in the near future to discuss the\u00a0weight limit. But there is already pressure being put on the\u00a0County Commissioners to increase the maximum\u00a0load limit back up to 40 tons, the way it\u00a0was before the work began, so the logging companies can reap huge profits. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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I am not against logging companies making plenty of money, but this is our historic covered bridge and we have a substantial amount of money invested in it. The logging companies who want to be free to ruin it don\u2019t. As far as I am concerned \u2026\u00a0 if the logging companies want to haul multiple 80,000 pound loads of timber out of these mountains, \u00a0then they should build a new bridge meant to carry that weight, or they can erect a temporary bridge, alongside\u00a0it or somewhere else for that matter, or they can haul their timber out of their\u00a0using an alternate route over another bridge that is not made of wood\u2026 To my way of thinking it is just their cost of operating a logging company. They should not be allowed to begin the deterioration process that led to our bridge sagging in the first place by hauling unlimited\u00a080,000 pound loads of logs across the bridge.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Weyerhaeuser is not a member of my little community… It is a big international corporation. They don\u2019t live up here, and they don\u2019t care about anything except maximizing their corporate profits. They don\u2019t have to stand by and watch as their speeding logging trucks come barreling down our quiet country road with heavy loads of logs destined for market that prevent them from being able to stop if someone’s life depended on it… That\u2019s because their drivers, and the many independent drivers\u00a0they hire are driving those speeding logging trucks!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Weyerhaeuser and the other logging outfits who want to harvest their timber\u00a0from these mountains should set up their own temporary bridge across the river somewhere else, or they should continue to haul their timber out of here using an alternate route back to town as they have been doing for the past year if they want to market their harvestable timber.\u00a0It doesn\u2019t take that much longer, and it\u00a0should just be viewed as the cost of operating a successful logging\u00a0operation up here… Our County Commissioner’s job is to protect the taxpayer\u2019s investment in the recently renovated bridge, not to cave in to pressure from big logging companies, and it is not to see how much weight they can let these logging companies haul over the bridge\u00a0during a\u00a0short period of time before it starts to sag again.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Posting a legal load limit of 40 tons doesn\u2019t really mean a damn thing… It’s how many times a day, week, or month during the course of a year\u00a0those 80,000 pound truckloads of heavy logs are going across the\u00a0Goodpasture Covered Bridge? \u00a0That’s\u00a0what counts. If the County won’t stop\u00a0the heavy loads of logs from going across the Goodpasture Bridge, then I want them to lay a weight sensitive cable across the southern approach to the bridge that would detect just how many times a\u00a0week these heavy loads of logs weighing nearly 40 tons each are crossing the wooden bridge. If they won\u2019t protect the bridge\u00a0by setting a lower legal weight limit, then that is the least they can do.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The job of Lane County Commissioners is to protect the taxpayer\u2019s investment in the Goodpasture Covered Bridge since it was taxpayer\u2019s money that was used to fix. It was not Weyerhaeuser\u2019s money that went to repair the bridge.\u00a0 Yet it was certainly Weyerhaeuser that contributed the bulk of the heavy traffic that wrecked the bridge.\u00a0 It is now up to the Lane County Commissioners to protect the taxpayer\u2019s investment in the bridge so that we don\u2019t ever have to repeat this massive renovation project again… Let’s see if their spines\u00a0are at least as strong as the\u00a0steel cables that were used to reinforce the bridge to keep it from sagging!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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UPDATE:<\/strong>\u00a0 On April 30th, 2013 the Lane County Board of Commissioners bowed to big ressure\u00a0from big logging\u00a0interests led by Weyerhaeuser, Rosboro Lumber Company, and Giustina Land and Timber Company and voted unanimously\u00a0five to zero to post a new weight limit of 44 tons\u00a0on the historic Goodpasture covered bridge. This comes hard on the heels of a multi-million dollar renovation of the wooden bridge financed by the Federal government that was caused by these same timber companies hauling their excessively heavy loads across the bridge in the past.\u00a0 Let the degradation begin all over again.<\/p>\n

For a link to the public testimony on the new weight limit please click here: \u00a0 http:\/\/apps.lanecounty.org\/WebCast\/Play.aspx?mid=961<\/a><\/p>\n

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If you liked this story then please join me on our new social network at https:\/\/www.wepluribus.net\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Goodpasture<\/a>\"Goodpasture<\/a><\/p>\n

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Now that the repair work on the historic Goodpasture Covered Bridge is done, our Lane County Board of Commissioners should start considering how to best protect the bridge and the taxpayer\u2019s investment in the newly renovated bridge.. However since they really didn’t spend much of the local taxpayer\u2019s money, to fix it, they enjoy a certain amount of insulation from the cause and effect of the deliberate heavy use of the bridge by commercial logging operations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6],"tags":[288,289,290,291],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lessgovisthebestgov.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}