Although officials from the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, the City of Petal and the City of Hattiesburg expected the East Hardy Street bridge to re-open this week after approximately three months of repair work, delays caused by inclement weather and work on the bridge’s guardrails have necessitated the completion date of that project to be pushed back yet another week.
According to an April 26 post on the board of supervisors’ Facebook page, barring any further unexpected delays, the bridge – which connects Petal and Hattiesburg over the Leaf River – should re-open to motorists no later than May 10.
“It is our goal to be as transparent as possible,” the post states. “Unfortunately, the unpredictability of weather or other uncontrollable circumstances sometimes makes it hard to be 100 percent accurate.
“We would like to apologize for giving you another timeline that is being pushed back.”
In addition to the trouble caused by recent rainfall, workers also had difficulty pouring the bridge’s guardrails at the end of the finger joints. That issue has now been resolved, but some work remains to be done before the bridge can be traveled again.
“They have to finish up the deck, along with other finishing touches that have to be completed before they can go back in with the last layer of asphalt,” the post states. “After they put down the necessary stripes … then we can put people on the road.
“An engineer from TL Wallace (the construction company performing the work) said that ‘if we are not finished by next Friday, we will be close.’ Your continued patience and understanding is felt and appreciated. The finish line is in sight.”
Over the past week, workers have completed the following items, including but not limited to:
- The installation of asphalt on the Hattiesburg and Petal sides of the bridge;
- The grading, forming and pouring of sections of the sidewalk on the Hattiesburg side;
- The completion of curb inlets on the section of the roadway to be opened;
- The installation of landscaping in the curb islands on the Hattiesburg side;
- The continued removal of overhang forms; and
- The grassing and mulching of a section of the roadway on the Hattiesburg side.
The bridge has been closed to traffic since January 22, when it was shut down to allow drainage work and other measures.
However, some upcoming drainage work just south of Carterville Road in Petal will necessitate a closure of a small portion of South Main Street once work on the bridge is complete. That closure, which will take place along South Main from the red light at Carterville Road to Dawson Cutoff, is expected to last approximately a month.
Terri Bell, who serves as president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, said work could be completed while the bridge project progresses, but that measure would have made it more difficult for the businesses in that area, including the MJ Discount convenience store and Cochran’s Muffler and Auto Shop.
“We wanted to keep these businesses as accessible to traffic as we could,” she said in a previous story. “We feel like this way, people can get to them, because we’ve poured driveways to them, so people can get to them while we’re in this last phase of the drainage on the Petal side.”
Officials are currently working to complete a new bridge adjacent to the current bridge, which will replace the structure that has connected Hattiesburg and Petal for more than 70 years.
Officials had originally considered demolishing the current bridge, but after learning that endeavor would cost approximately $1 million, the decision was made to leave the structure and transform it into a pedestrian bridge. The funds for that project will come from the Leaf and Bouie Redevelopment District, which was recently established to take the taxes from each side of the Leaf and Bouie rivers and reinvest them back into those areas of Hattiesburg, Petal and Forrest County.
“We have that district set up down there, and that’s bringing in some revenue for the second or third year,” said David Hogan, former president of the Forrest County Board of Supervisors, in a previous story. “So we’ll have some money built up to do some stuff to the old bridge once it’s not in use anymore.
“It’s going to be a destination point. There will be a walking path and some lighting, and we’ll probably paint it during events.”
With the help of matching grants from the United States Department of Transportation, officials from Petal, Forrest County and Hattiesburg are working to put forward matching grants to make a walking path possible on the bridge. The funds would come from the department of transportation’s Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity discretionary grant program for 2024, which is designed to help communities around the country carry out projects with significant local or regional impact.
“I’m extremely excited about taking this step forward for the city to partner with Forrest County and the City of Petal to make the old East Hardy bridge an asset to our entire community,” Hattiesburg City Council president Jeffrey George said in a previous story. “I think the potential addition of this pedestrian path will help us continue to expand outdoor recreation opportunities and will further our mission to realize the Leaf River as an asset to our city.”
