Current events

Maintenance problems with the Bonner Bridge argue strongly in favor of a new bridge that sidesteps the currents of Oregon Inlet

Oregon Inlet and the Bonner Bridge that straddles it are locked in a mighty -- and mighty expensive -- struggle. N&O readers got a good look at the uneven contest last Sunday, in Joseph Neff's up-close and underwater report on what it takes to keep this key link to the Outer Banks upright until its replacement is ready.

The story from the inlet bears not only on the present bridge's safety (shaky but OK for now, officials insist) but on an equally important issue -- which of two bridge replacement plans is better?

The ever-clearer answer: a new span that avoids as much as possible the conditions that make the Bonner Bridge a high-maintenance money-eater.

The maintenance nightmare strongly suggests that the "long bridge" option would be preferable in the long run to the "parallel bridge" favored by state officials.

Why? Consider the bridge's setting. Oregon Inlet, between Bodie Island and the northern end of Hatteras Island, has in Neff's words "more high winds, strong tides, storms and shifting sands than any other inlet on the East Coast." He describes a "ceaseless contest between engineering and nature" to keep the 44-year-old concrete-piling bridge in place and in one piece.

All but the kitchen sink

In the decades since the Bonner Bridge was built that effort has involved carpeting its navigation channel with 13,000 tons of rock spread 4 feet deep and 100 feet wide, special steel and concrete "crutches" to shore up a slumping bridge section and reinforced concrete placed around the pilings. Divers such as Ben Presgrave conduct frequent inspection trips, making dangerous descents in the powerful, sand-shifting current under the bridge.

All this has cost tens of millions. And, no surprise, the state expects to spend $40 million more to keep the bridge open until 2015.

That brings us to the present fork in the road. There's long been disagreement over which way to go with a badly needed replacement bridge. The choice has come down to the parallel span, about 2.5-miles long and roughly in line with the existing bridge, or the long bridge -- 17 or so miles through shallow Pamlico Sound, ending at Rodanthe on Hatteras Island.

Down the road

After years of back and forth disputing, officials and several agencies this summer lined up behind the shorter span. It can be completed more quickly and the initial capital investment (perhaps $350 million) is far less.

Far less for right now, that is. The $350 million bridge would be only a down payment an a larger project.

To deal with shifting sands and an encroaching ocean along Pea Island (essentially the northern part of Hatteras Island), the parallel bridge plan relies on an eventual series of new bridges or causeways along N.C. 12 through the wild and woolly terrain of the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

That's where graders and dozers regularly do battle with the migrating dunes, and where the Atlantic rollers pound ever closer to the road.

Fail to reconfigure that route and there's no effective connection between the new bridge and Hatteras. The extended project's eventual cost could exceed $1 billion -- about the same as the long bridge's upfront cost.

Furthermore, the state would have to secure permits to build bridges on N.C. 12 past the wildlife refuge. No one can guarantee they would be forthcoming.

Now consider what the Bonner Bridge is telling us via Neff's report: beware Oregon Inlet! Isn't it likely that a parallel bridge would encounter parallel problems? The longer route veers away from the inlet. Most of its length would be in relatively sheltered Pamlico Sound. The route bypasses the wildlife refuge. It avoids the years of trouble ahead with the Atlantic Ocean and the complexities of maintaining a vital transportation and evacuation corridor past the unstable zone occupied by the refuge.

Coming up with the money to build the longer span wouldn't be easy. But at least taxpayer dollars wouldn't be washed away so quickly afterward.