Floyd County OKs bridge replacement project

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Board of Supervisors accepted a bid for a little more than half a million dollars Tuesday morning for a bridge project about three miles northwest of Charles City.

The county typically has been rebuilding about a bridge every summer, and this latest project is on 195th Street west of Packard Avenue.

Henkel Construction Co. of Mason City was the only bidder, at $513,282.

Floyd County Engineer Dusten Rolando said the engineer’s estimate for the cost was about $479,000, and the bid was close enough that he was comfortable recommending the supervisors accept and approve it, pending a final check of the numbers.

“I was surprised some others didn’t bid on it,” Rolando said, adding that a number of companies had expressed interest.

“There a lot of bridge projects out there that are yet to be bid,” he said, suggesting that other companies may be waiting to bid on bigger projects.

“We’ll get in there and get it going this summer. It shouldn’t take that long, to be honest with you,” Rolando said. “It’s a simple bridge. We’ve already taken out the old bridge.”

He said the bridge project would be paid for through the state 10-cent fuel tax increase that was passed in 2015 to support infrastructure projects.

Rolando also told the board that a county road project last year had won a state prize.

The road project north of Marble Rock won the best county road award from the Iowa Concrete Paving Association at its annual convention last week, he said. The project was done by Cedar Valley Corp. of Waterloo.

“It’s nice to get,” he said. “There were probably seven or eight candidates.”