The Guthrie County Secondary Roads Department is beginning to wrap up a spring project. 

County Engineer Josh Sebern says the estimated finishing date for replacing the bridge at the Menlo exit from Interstate-80 is in late August. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio this project is about reinforcing this bridge with steel and concrete. Sebern notes this improvement will be beneficial to traffic coming through the area.

“Numerous overweight loads have gone over that. A lot of the cranes that the ethanol plant serve, they go over this bridge. Rose acres in that vicinity  will be able to utilize this. The bridge had not been posted, but we were very close to approaching a posting on it, so we needed to get this taken care of so we could keep the heavy loads moving in the area.”

Sebern says this project was mainly funded through federal dollars and road use tax money and also Guthrie County received a state bridge bundling package grant tied in with Dallas and Madison counties. Guthrie County’s portion of the cost was  $760,000.