Questions from Board Meeting held June 2008 with Art Anderson and Geo Engineers, and from the 2008 Annual Meeting held on July 12th.
Below is a compilation of the questions that were asked at the Board meeting and the Annual Members meeting. We combined the questions from both meetings that were similar. The hyperlinks at the top will take you to the question in the main body of the text. To return to the index, click the back button on your browser.
1. Can we replace creosote pilings. Can we still use them in bridge plans?
2. What is the cost to do a whole new deck?
3. What is the lifespan of concrete versus steel?
5. What kind of annual costs for maintenance will we have for the new bridge? How much money do we need to set aside each year for maintenance on a new bridge?
6. On permitting, what is the Historical Preservation Act?
11. If we give our bridge to the county, what are the advantages?
12. Are there other types of bridges that can be built instead of the ones you have presented?
15. What are upland modifications?
17. Can we apply for more than one grant?
19. Why is there no bracing shown on the bridge concept drawing?
20. Are steel pilings OK in salt water?
21. Do you have the life span of the existing bridge?
22. Have we got permits in place now for any of this bridge work?
25. How long does it take to get permits?
28. [To Board] I would like to know the cost of the fourth option.
30. (A) If you can figure out how to remove the old bridge, and then build the new one, would it reduce the overall cost?
30. (C) Like a temporary causeway?
32. In the permit process, can we be denied a bridge altogether and be forced to go to a ferry system?
34. Did we talk about any demo costs on this and if yes, how much was that?
1. Question: Can we replace creosote pilings. Can we still use them in bridge plans?
Answer: Have to go with something different. Creosote is not allowed in the marine environment anymore. Actually there is a mandate by DNR to remove all creosote pilings starting in 2010. Don’t know how it applies to bridges. That applies more to marinas where they have DNR agreements. Arsenic Zinc Copper (AZC) treated wood is still allowed, but don’t know for how much longer. Have to probably replace with concrete or steel. Concrete gets you through the permitting process a little easier. Steel and concrete must be sounded while installing, vibrations could kill fish. Steel resonates more than concrete.
2. Question: What is the cost to do a whole new deck?
Answer: 1.5 million according to standard highway construction standards.
3. Question: What is the lifespan of concrete versus steel?
Answer: I think concrete is the way to go. Don’t see a big difference between concrete and steel. Both could last for 75 years.
4. Question: A new bridge has a 75 year lifespan. According to your report, our bridge had a 50 year lifespan. Is this the guaranteed lifespan or.....?
Answer: The 50 year lifespan estimate is in a northern climate in water. In a southern climate in water it is only 25 years. The estimates are taken from something like the American Wood Association. A creosote bridge on dry land, say a train bridge, then the estimate is 100 years. 50 years is an estimate. Everything is unique in its site, its environment.
5. Question: What kind of annual costs for maintenance will we have for the new bridge? How much money do we need to set aside each year for maintenance on a new bridge?
Answer: We have concentrated on new bridge construction. We haven’t looked at the maintenance side of it, but we would be happy to do that, at a cost. There are other options also, like contacting the county and find out what their historical maintenance cost are on their bridges.
6. Question: On permitting, what is the Historical Preservation Act?
Answer: Basically it involves cultural resources, historic properties, probably requiring some sort of archeological assessment of the site, just to make sure you’re not digging somewhere where there’s a grave yard or somewhere you’re going to damage cultural resources.
7. Question [from Engineer]: Department of Natural Resources’ requirements may differ depending on whether you own the tidelands, or what the ownership issues are. How will this affect us?
Answer: We, TICC, do own the 60’ wide tract of land under the bridge through the mud. It includes upland, tide land, oyster land. It is a tract of land; it has its own tract number.
8. Question: Why can’t we remove the bridge and fill in the tract with dirt or partially and build a road from the mainland to the island with a huge culvert or a shorter bridge in the middle? I understand the county suggested something like this in the 1970's?
Answer: Washington State does not allow this anymore. If we would have done this in 1970, we would be looking at ways to remove the road fill and replacing it with a bridge. There are many such projects going on right now. I can tell you right now that is frowned upon heavily and you have to have a really good excuse to do something like that. Pretty much the Corps of Engineers has stopped allowing inner-tidal fill. So what they would say to you if you came to them and said we want to reduce our span, we want to create a causeway, we want to fill abutments out into the inner tidal area, they would say try again, come up with another option.
9. Question: Based on the window of time the State Agencies allow construction in the water, if we had all the permits and everything ready to go by July 16th, could it be done by February 15th of the next year?
Answer: I believe we could have all the “in-water” work done within that time period. We can have all the pilings driven and construction within the water level done within that time period.
10. Question [from Engineer]: Why doesn’t Treasure Island want to give their bridge to the county? What are the disadvantages?
Answer: From what we have heard in the past attempts to give the bridge to the county, the county would want our roads and a 60 foot right of way around the island. We currently have a 40 foot right of way. This would mean taking an additional 20 feet of property from each homeowner. We would no longer be private. The county does not want a bridge that goes to private property.
11. Question: If we give our bridge to the county, what are the advantages?
Answer: The County, being a governmental agency, has access to a lot of funds and there is a lot of granting opportunities to the county, where you could work collaboratively with them, the cost to the homeowner would be significantly reduced. There would be a little bit of loss of perceived control over the island. (State Road Improvement District?)
12. Question: Are there other types of bridges that can be built instead of the ones you have presented?
Answer: This is a typical new bridge and the cost. When you go to build a new bridge, I wouldn’t necessarily build that concept. I would say lets decide we’re going to build a new bridge by looking at the big picture and the economics. Once that decision is made, then you go out and you get designs for it. You say we’re building a new bridge, what’s the best new bridge we can build for this site and you optimize a new bridge design. But at this stage we took a typical bridge to get the typical cost, a reasonable cost. That’s to guide your decision on which way to go. It may be a cable-stay bridge or something that would be less expensive, but the goal would be what can we do that meets the requirements to get us a lane or two across within whatever the county requires and spend the least amount of money in 75 years over the life so when you went to the final design you would optimize for the best design for this site. You have a nice long span, you’ve got some distance to work with.
13. Question: I notice the new designs are along side the existing bridge. Will these new bridge designs stay within our property lines?
Answer: Yes, we will keep the new bridge within the property lines. We have to. We, as an engineering company, have some questions also, where is the property line? What is the exact elevation at both ends? Basically, we’ll need a survey with elevations, contours and property lines.
14. Question: In concept Two, you have the pilings coming straight down. Can you drive them in at an angle too? Keeping it a similar appearance to the bridge we have now.
Answer: The crane can come in and drive the piles straight down without affecting the existing pilings. That’s where your savings in cost is. Angled piles are a little more expensive that vertical piles, but yes it could be done that way.
15. Question: What are upland modifications?
Answer: If we have an alignment change to the bridge, widening of the bridge, we have to fix the road, we have to affect the signaling if we’re going to stay with a one lane bridge, might be some utilities added.
16. Question: The minimum rating for a new bridge is H-15, which is lower than the 27 ton rating we have now. To build it to the same load carrying capacity we have now, would it cost more?
Answer: Yes, a little bit more. We would probably build it to H-22, which is a standard highway rating.
17. Question: Can we apply for more than one grant?
Answer: Yes, you can apply for quite a few, but you must meet the requirements of all the grantors, which could be holding a set amount of money for each. One cost $30,000.00 just to apply. There are some that require matching funds, sometimes up to half the amount.
18. Question: The permitting process could take up to 2 years with an additional 1 year to build the new bridge and part of it within the July – February time constraints. We have outstanding bridge repairs that need to be done. How are we going to address those?
Answer: We know there are problems out there. We don’t know that there are problems that you should shut the bridge down. We know that over time, things are not going to get better. What we need to do is get out there and inspect it again. If we go with option 1, which is the repair option, then I would say start fixing and move forward. If we are going to go with option 2 or 3, then fix only the things that need to be fixed. If it’s going to go for 5 years before construction starts, then we need to inspect every year or every 6 months.
19. Question: Why is there no bracing shown on the bridge concept drawing?
Answer: Don’t need it. It depends on the size of these piles. In my opinion, at this stage, I’d make these piles big enough that they can take the load in bending. You get a much cleaner structure. No cross bracing – cross bracing is the first thing to go because it the thinnest timber. I build a lot of piers and we get rid of the cross bracing. We just have stronger materials and bigger cranes available so you do it that way and that means less labor.
20. Question: Are Steel Pilings OK in salt water?
Answer: We’d protect it. Just about anything you put in the water is going to deteriorate. Timber is going to deteriorate so we treat it, it helps, it doesn’t make it last forever. Concrete with steel inside deteriorates; the concrete protects it. It’s like a nice coating. But if that steel goes, you have a problem. If you have steel pipes, eventually they’re going to go, but you protect them. You can use different methods, galvanize, painting, and other systems, but we boil it down to we’re going to protect them and maintain them. Steel works very well.
21. Question: Do you have the life span of the existing bridge?
Answer: We do. This bridge probably has about 15 years left on the concrete deck...
22. Question: Have we got permits in place now for any of this bridge work?
Answer: We did some permitting to get to the geotechnical investigations so that we could get somewhere in the design phase of it, but we don’t currently have permits to do any kind of modifications to the bridge or for a new bridge. Basically, we have to have a project in hand to go to the agencies with before we can finalize that. We could do a lot of the data collection , which is what we’ve done – a lot of the data collection up front, a lot of the data could change: what the new species are on the beach, what the potential is, but I think that the key that we don’t have is we don’t know what the impacts are. Part of that is because we don’t have enough design information yet and we don’t have a project. Once we have that, we’ll be able to move forward, but everything that we’ve done up front has been towards that end. Either way we go – if we do a modified bridge or if we build a new bridge, we know that there are certain requirements that we’re going to have to meet so we’re working towards that end. We know something is going to have to be done.
23. Question: If we were to choose anything but a complete bridge replacement, is it possible to be put into the position of not being able to complete the component replacement option we chose because of the changing permitting requirements?
Answer: Basically, the question is because there’re a lot of unknowns in regulations and are you going to be stuck in a situation where you get five years down the road and you’re going to do maintenance and repairs on the bridge and suddenly the regulatory agencies come back and say “No, you can’t do this anymore. You need to replace this bridge.” So you’ve invested basically in an option that’s not going to be viable, potentially could not be viable in five years or so. That’s a very valid question and a very valid concern. It’s hard to predict which way the regulations are going to go, but I think we’ve all seen, I think everyone in this room has seen that the regulations have become more strict. All I can give you is my own professional opinion come by doing this, by being in this industry, that they are heading for becoming more strict. That is a great point and I thank you for bringing that up. That’s a very valid concern. You don’t want to get stuck in a situation where you think you have a plan, you move down the road and five years from now, or even ten years from now, when you get close to finishing it and you’ve invested almost a million dollars or two million dollars and you’re told you need five million for a brand new bridge.
24. Question: The Endangered Species Act. Are we going to find that if we go down the path of building a new bridge or even doing the repairs, we’ll run into some protected shellfish that we can’t disturb?
Answer: Is there a potential that endangered species that may be listed in the future will cause a major restriction in your ability to build a new bridge or are there any endangered species currently that are of concern. Right now the biggest concern are fish species and those fish species are basically Chinook salmon, steelhead – there’s also bull trout, but there’s not a lot of bull trout in this area so that’s not as much of a concern. The problem with having listed fish species is that they can be anywhere at any time. We’ve pretty much narrowed down the timing of when they’re going to be in to certain parts of the Sound and that’s where the work window comes from. They’re trying to make sure that when the work is done, the juvenile fish are not in the area or when adults are not migrating through the area. As of right now there are established windows that you can do work such as this. I think to answer your question for now, you are going to be restricted and mostly because of fish. We’re not aware of any species right now that would cause us to not be able to do any work at the bridge.
25. Question: How long does it take to get permits?
Answer: I can give you the general timelines for this: The SEPA checklist takes about 45 days or so, depending on how quickly the county moves with it. Then the Fish and Wildlife has 45 days after that to make a decision. Typically you have about 120 days to get a Shoreline permit, although anyone who’s gotten a Shoreline permit in the last ten years knows that that 120 days is not reasonable typically. Then, the biggest factor is the Corps of Engineers. Currently to get a permit such as this, which would qualify more than likely – if you’re talking about a replacement of a bridge, it’s going to qualify for an individual permit to the Corps of Engineers. That’s going to take you anywhere from eighteen months to two years. That process runs concurrently with the state and local permitting. It’s not like you have to do your state and local permits that take about six months to a year and then wait and then start the federal process. You do them at the same time so that you should be able to secure all of your permits within eighteen months to two years, unless there’s something out of the ordinary that occurs.
26. Question: Depending on whether you believe in global warming or not, do we have to look at possibly spending more, if water levels did rise in the next 50 years?
Answer: What happens if water levels change? As long as the water level stayed below the abutments and roads. We design for flood levels, we design for higher than normal water levels. I don’t think it would effect the bridge at all, but certainly if the water got above the top of the bridge and covered the roads, that would be a real problem.
27. Question: I’m interested in option four, which is having the county come in and be responsible for the bridge. Would they work with you and would we have input into the design of the bridge?
Answer: Right now we don’t know. That was just brought up at our June Board Meeting and Daryl Axelson had gotten some information from the folks over at Raft Island. We know that we have some legwork to do if we do indeed want to pursue that.
28. Question: [to Board] I would like to know the cost of the fourth option.
Answer: The information that I have about the cost of having the county take it over – what I’ve heard, again I don’t know this for fact, what I have heard through various sources about when it was asked before, the County’s response was (and this is the Dept of Transportation) they said that we would have to build it first and then they’d take it over. We want to contact the people at Raft Island and talk to them.
29. Question: [to Engineer] In your budget considerations did you make any allowances for mitigation for environmental?
Answer: No we did not. The reason we didn’t is because we don’t know that there’s going to be a need for mitigation. A lot of times with projects like this, if you can replace them in close to the same footprint, or there’s even the possibility we could go with larger piles, we could reduce the number of piles and then the project becomes what we refer to as ‘self-mitigating’. This project has that opportunity from the standpoint that there’s a lot of creosote pilings out there and the regulatory agencies want those creosote pilings out of the water. The act of taking those out in and of itself is a mitigating factor. We don’t know how much impact it will be on the upper beach from any replacement of the abutments; we don’t know if there’s going to be a widened deck and how much shading that’s going to have on the upper beach. I’m not worried about shade so much in the center of the span because it’s high enough and there’s enough light penetration but on the upper beach there may be some potential for that – there may be a need for a small amount of mitigation. What we don’t know about whether or not there would be a need for mitigation kind of leads us to your second question.
30a. Question: If you can figure out how to remove the old bridge, and then build the new one, would it reduce the overall cost?
Answer: I think the issue is going to be if you rip it out, how would you get off the island. Your question relates to what do you do while we’re building a new bridge after the old one is ripped out? To save demolition? Just leave it there?
30b. Question: Trying to construct and work around the existing structure, is there one way or another that is more expensive?
Answer: You’re wanting to know if there is a way to save cost by coming up with an alternative way for homeowners to get on and off the island for the period of time it takes to demolish it and .....
30c. Question: Like a temporary causeway?
Answer: I don’t think you could put in a temporary causeway, but if you could demo the bridge and build a new one and not have to work around the old one, there are some savings. There’s also some loss because you’re going to have to have access out there. If you’re going to be building the new bridge next to the old bridge, the contractors can work on the bridge sometimes. That saves them. I don’t know that I have enough data that I could tell you what is cheaper. Except going to a contractor and saying How do you want to do it? If you’ve got a guy that’s water based and he’s the low bid and he’s more used to working from the water, he’s going to say Get it out of there. If you’ve got a guy that’s done a lot of land based stuff, he’s going to say I want to use that bridge.
30d. Question: You’re suggesting that the use of the existing bridge as an element of construction eliminates some of the problems the contractor is going to have. That actually using the old bridge during construction of the new bridge has an element of benefit to it?
Answer: It can, yes.
31. Question: If we take no action, is there any state or local agency that in the future, because of the condition of the bridge, could actually condemn the bridge? Could we be denied a bridge altogether?
Answer: I believe this is what you’re asking: Can an agency come in and condemn the bridge? The way I’m going to answer this is...Let’s say your bridge fell down in the middle of the night and you went forward and said well we need a bridge and you try to get an emergency permit – More than likely the agencies will give you an emergency permit to rebuild a bridge if it happened within two years of you asking. If you went two, three, or five years and you just left the bridge laying there and you came back and said we want to rebuild the bridge, the agencies may at that point say well how have you been getting on and off the island. And if you say well we have this ferry system. They might say the ferry system works great for us. We want you to do the ferry. There is that potential. They can come back and say that to you. But I don’t think anyone here is just going to let the bridge lay on the bottom of the Sound so I don’t know if that’s an issue.
32. Question: In the permit process, can we be denied a bridge altogether and be forced to go to a ferry system?
Answer: This is speculation on my part, but currently in the regulatory climate, if you have an existing structure such as this bridge, you are allowed to maintain it, you are allowed to repair it, and you are allowed to rebuild it. They’re not going to deny you a new bridge. What they’re going to do is they’re going to condition how you build it, how big it is, where it is sited, and a lot of other factors that they can condition. And that’s mostly what they’re going to do. They’re not going to come and say sorry, its ferry or nothing. That’s not how they work.
33. Question: Did you use quotes from Contractors for the construction costs to replace the bridge with concrete or replace the bridge with steel?
Answer: I don’t want to be unclear, but sort of yes and no. What we have are called engineering estimates for what it would typically cost. We don’t have enough design to put it out there for a quote. That would take more engineering work to put together a package to get bids. The other thing we have is we have a gentleman who I believe used to work for General Engineering, he did a lot of cost estimating and he did it for a contractor, so internally we’ve already done that for each option. So we’ve done multiple different ways of estimating the cost. The average bridge costs include construction type costs – how big of a barge do you need, how long will the barge have to be in there? We haven’t gone outside to a contractor with a bid package. We’re not at that stage yet, but I feel that our data is at that level based upon what was done.
34. Question: Did we talk about any demo costs on this and if yes, how much was that?
Answer: We’ve included demo costs yes. I don’t have the specifics right here but we could get that to you if you want it.
35. Question: I think we need to do a lot more analysis on what’s going on out here before we jump into this. Have we done any soil bearings for what type of piles we’re going to use?
Answer: We’ve done soil borings. This gets back to how do you figure out how much it costs and we would have a much better feel for how much this cost if the design was drawn and we had contractor’s bids, but that’s going to cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars to get that. You can’t do that three or four times to get the best answer so we backed up and we estimate on square foot of a typical design to see where the answer is. In this one it came out fairly clear – you get five times the life for 50% more money. Nobody wants to spend more money, but when you get something that lasts 75 years instead of doing something again in fifteen, the long term economics is really clear. Economically, long term, there is a clear answer and changes, a little bit here, a little bit there, are not going to make an order of magnitude change. You still have with any project, up-front costs. It doesn’t matter what the long term economic gain is if you can’t get it in on it on day one. That happens on every project and that’s part of the decision. My two areas of expertise is I’m trying to tell you technically what is the most feasible and what economically works the best. There’s more to what bridge you do and how you go after this – there’s aesthetics, there’s a lot of things that could be done. There’re a lot of questions you could ask me that I can’t answer yet and what I want people to understand is we can spend more money and answer all those questions, but I don’t think it will change what is being recommended. That’s what I call efficiently using your money to get you your answer. It’s not like buying a car where you know everything – it’s this much for this car. These questions aren’t going to change a lot of what I presented here today even if there’s a 10% mistake. There are always things like I wonder if the steel prices are different, or what about labor prices. Everything’s changing, so what we did is we have a contingency. We say here’s an accurate estimate and here’s a 25% contingency – that’s a lot of money. That’s because of the accuracy of where we are, but we have our arms around the problem. It’s going to cost that or less. When you get done with the design and you’ve put it out to bid, your contingency is going to be 10% or 5%, because we’ll have a more accurate number then. What I tell people when I’m doing cost versus budget is I don’t go out and find a contractor and say I want to spend 4.4 million dollars – No, I tell him I want to get it done for three million and I tell people you’d better have enough money to pay up to four at this stage. By the time you sign a contract with a contractor you’re not going to have that much reserve – you’re not going to need it because as you get closer to the answer you’re going to get more accurate. What I want is a number that you’re not going to be surprised with. If there’re going to be any surprises, I’d like them to be savings, not more money.
36. Question: If the bridge would have a 75 year lifespan, it would make sense for the bridge financing to spread over something like that lifespan. That’s how the Narrows bridge is being paid for.
Answer: We have a member who has given me some information and is getting me some information on a lead for how that bridge funding came about and is there a way for us to piggyback into it somehow, at least for some guidance.