Brummit Road is scheduled to close this week for a bridge replacement project at the Little Calumet River, after a two-month delay. Porter County Engineer Michael Novotney says the contractor was ready to go in June, but the utility companies failed to move their lines out of the way.
"That includes NIPSCO, that includes Frontier and that includes Comcast. And really, in my eyes, there's no excuse for them not having been moved and out of the way," Novotney told the county commissioners last week.
That will push the reopening from November to May. He also said the county will go after the utilities to cover the expected cost increases.
Meanwhile, the commissioners chose the Lochmueller Group to design a new bridge on County Road 1050 South over Pleasant Township Ditch. Novotney said it had to be closed in May, after it failed a regular inspection.
"Two of the box beams had actually broken, so any further traffic over it would have been at risk of severe damage or injury," he explained.
The county is speeding up the replacement process by funding the bridge itself, but construction is still more than a year away.
