Resident tells commissioners a county bridge is washed out; Road & Bridge staff says dumped debris caused erosion

At the June 17 meeting, Brett Everly, a resident who identified his address as 1015 E 6 and said he lives with his 103-year-old mother, told the commissioners the bridge serving 2808 North Hugging Hollow Drive is “completely washed out” and complained that county and township officials had not remedied the problem after he first raised it in November.

“Now you're gonna have to spend a lot more to fix this bridge,” Everly said, adding that the washout prevents access in emergencies and affects electrical and fire response.

County Road & Bridge staff (Jim) responded later in the meeting, saying road crews repaired the structure in 2021 by replacing rotted wooden piles with steel members using on-hand materials at no cost. He said the bridge structure itself remains sound and that the current erosion was caused when someone dumped concrete debris in the channel, diverting flow and causing the bank to erode.

“The fix was adequate, and it was more than adequate and sufficient,” Jim said. “What happened was somebody dumped concrete debris in that channel causing the water to go around that debris and causing the erosion at the end of the bridge. The bridge itself is fine.”

Jim said the person who dumped debris needs to remove it and “make it right,” and that the county's recent emergency repair in 2021 was performed quickly to restore access for farming and harvest traffic. Commissioners did not take a formal vote or commit county crews to a new repair at the meeting; no timeline for remediation was recorded.

Discussion points: resident's allegation of delayed maintenance, Road & Bridge account of a 2021 emergency repair using steel members, claim that third-party dumping caused the erosion. Direction/decision: no formal commission action recorded; Road & Bridge staff characterized the remediation responsibility as belonging to the party that dumped debris and noted the county had previously repaired the structure.