> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 🔨 Putting the Old Bridge to the Pile-driving Test - HRWSBA August '26 - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/putting-the-old-bridge-to-the-pile-driving-test-hrwsba-august-26/ - Published: 2026-09-15T07:00:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-15T07:00:03.000Z - Description: Federal reviewers cut the bridge project's benefit score nearly in half, and the Authority filed its answer on September 4. Meanwhile a price fight over 18 test piles sent the board into a closed session, and a $404,548 invoice has sat at Federal Highways for 448 days. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: Hood River White Salmon Bridge Replacement, Klickitat County, Skamania County *Enjoy the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19792561?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts.* ## 🌉 August 2026 Bridge Authority Round-Up **Agencies Covered:** Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority (three meetings: August 10, August 24, and a special session on August 27). **The Bottom Line:** The bridge's federal grant application is still alive, but reviewers cut its benefit score nearly in half over one assumption, and the Authority filed its answer on September 4\. A price fight over 18 test piles sent the board into a closed session. **The Vibe:** Confident about the engineering, impatient with the money. Drilling is done, the estimate held at $1.12 billion, and the project is under budget. Almost every frustration in the room was about a federal agency's clock. --- ### 🔎 What Changed - Federal Highways told the Authority on **August 5** that its big grant application was rated **"Recommended"** and moves to the next round. - The **risk review came back clean.** Total project cost held at **$1.12 billion**, no adjustment. - **Geotechnical drilling is finished.** The last hole, at Bent 11, found rock about where the survey predicted. - **Hood River County opened public comment** on the project's land use permit. It closed September 1. ### ⚠ What Escalated - The **August 21 debrief** revealed that federal reviewers had recalculated the project's benefit score downward, from 1.9 to about 1.2, mostly over one earthquake assumption. - A **price disagreement with Kiewit** over 18 test piles pushed the board into a closed session on August 27 and a competitive-bidding backup plan. - The **BUILD grant close-out passed 448 days** at Federal Highways, on a $404,548 invoice the Authority already paid out of its own pocket. - **Toll traffic ran about 7.5% below** July of last year. ### 🧭 What's Next - **Filed September 4:** the revised grant application. A decision is not expected until late in the year. - **September 14:** next board meeting, 2 to 4 p.m., White Salmon and Zoom. - **January through March 2027:** the in-water work window the test piles have to fit inside. - **Late 2026:** when staff now expect a federal funding decision, moved back from September. --- ## Hood River-White Salmon Bridge Authority ### 💰 Rating the Bridge's Benefit The Authority applied for [Bridge Investment Program](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/bip/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) money in July 2025 and waited a year. On **August 5** the answer came back: **"Recommended."** Not the top grade, but it advances. That word caused an argument. Commissioner Mike Fox said the notice "basically derated us." Co-Chair Grant Polson disagreed, and Project Director Michael Shannon backed him: each round gets new reviewers who never see your old applications. So the board asked for a debrief, and on **August 21** it got the clearest look this project has ever had at its own scorecard. The application scores in three categories. It rated well in two and **middling in the third, the benefit-cost analysis**. That one category is the whole gap to the top grade. Inside it, one number moved. The Authority's math produced a benefit-cost ratio of **1.9**. Shannon told the board reviewers adjusted the assumptions and came out at **about 1.2**. Most of the drop came from a single disagreement: the Authority assumed the odds of an earthquake rise the longer we go without one, and the federal model holds them flat. The revision filed September 4 leans on a number the Authority already had. The old application assumed **36%** of bridge traffic was local. Its own toll records, by the zip codes on BreezeBy accounts, say it is **over 70%**. That matters because the benefit this bridge claims is the **44-mile detour it saves you**. The more local the traffic, the bigger the benefit, and the model turns out to be sensitive to it. Staff also refreshed the file with six new letters of support from the four treaty tribes, the inter-tribal fish commission and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, plus one from **Airbus**. And they moved their own timeline on the record: "I'm now officially moving my end of September to end of December." *(Last month:* [*Overnight Bridge Closures Start August 17*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/overnight-bridge-closures-start-august-17-hrws-bridge-authority-july-26/)*.)* ### 🔨 Eighteen Piles to Test the Old Bridge One question has to be answered before this project drives a single permanent foundation: **does building the new bridge damage the old one?** The plan calls for a temporary work platform on roughly **700 driven piles**, some within **50 feet** of a bridge that opened in 1924\. So crews will drive **18** of them first, watch the old bridge through its sensors, and find out. All 18 come back out afterward, because one permitting agency would not let them stay. On **August 18**, staff priced the work with Kiewit, holding an independent estimate for comparison. It did not go well. Shannon would say only that there was "a significant difference in those two numbers," and would not say more with negotiations live. So on August 24 the board faced an odd request: approve a backup plan to competitively bid work its own contractor is under contract to be considered for, without being told the number that made it necessary. Commissioner Kathryn Thomas pushed back, practically. It is late August, marine contractors are booked out, and "the ones we want don't have holes." Underneath sat a number nobody wants to find the hard way. If driving piles does harm the 1924 bridge, strengthening it enough to survive construction runs into the hundreds of millions. The realistic alternative is closing it for the duration. The board wanted more than it could legally hear that day, because its published agenda had said there would be no closed session. So it voted to reconvene on **August 27**. That meeting ran about an hour, mostly behind closed doors. The board came back at 5:36 p.m. and passed three motions in four minutes: appoint an oversight committee, let staff prepare a competitive bid package as a backup, and let staff line up the steel pipe in parallel. Each carried the same limit, said aloud every time: the committee only advises, and every real decision returns to the full board. This is Plan B. Plan A is still a deal with Kiewit. And **no public record says how the follow-up negotiation went.** Neither the price nor the committee members' names appear anywhere on file. *(Background:* [*Bridge Test Piles Halted by Insurance Hurdles*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/bridge-test-piles-halted-by-insurance-hurdles-hrwsba-5-27-6-8/)*.)* ### 📊 Under budget, behind schedule The July numbers cut both ways. **The schedule slipped.** Phase 1B now finishes **September 17, 2027**, about three months late. The design package construction actually waits on is only two weeks late. The causes are documented: a ten-week permitting delay on drilling, and a redesign that cut construction cost. **The spending went the other way.** The work done so far was worth **$35.6 million** and cost **$26.8 million**. Staff expect Kiewit to finish **$15 to $16 million** under its contract, well above Kiewit's own $8.5 million estimate, because Kiewit's projected spending for the next seven months runs 35% above its recent pace. Project controls lead Sean Weeks: "what we suspect is that they're just pushing all their unspent money forward." Co-Chair Eric Wilson wants the board watching so Kiewit is not "just loading up the end of the job." That underrun is not a curiosity. It is the money that would pay for the test piles, which is why the budget chart and the procurement fight are the same story. **Tolls.** July brought in **$712,193**. Traffic ran about **7.5% below** July 2025, which finance director Debbie Smith-Wagar puts down to gas prices, though summer traffic was up 8% over June as usual. The toll reserve passed **$10.5 million** and needs about $15 million. ### ⏳ 448 Days Without Repayment The most quietly infuriating item in August was one unpaid invoice. An earlier federal grant has a final reimbursement outstanding: **$404,547.71**, submitted in May 2025\. As of July 31 it had sat at Federal Highways for **448 days**. The Authority already paid those bills out of other funds. Staff described reviewers reopening invoices from three and four years ago that were already approved and paid, asking for more paperwork every month or two. Commissioner Mike Fox was blunt: "I think it's a great big delay tactic." His worry is scale, not this invoice. "We got to get this thing fixed because it will absolutely kill us in construction. 400 is one thing, but when you're spending 20 million a month." The board weighed escalating, invoking prompt-payment terms, even splitting future final invoices so only a token amount is ever exposed. What it chose was leverage, not confrontation: document all of it and raise it when the next grant agreement is negotiated, because "we can support it for a $400,000 invoice, we can't for a $10,000,000 invoice." The same pattern is starting on the next grant closing out. Separately, WSDOT reimbursements slowed to about a month after a software change, with **$1.73 million** outstanding. ### 🏞 A fight about how the bridge looks *Disclosure: I served on the Bridge Aesthetics Committee described below, as an appointed Washington community member, and attended four of its five meetings in 2024.* Hood River County's comment period on the land use permit closed **September 1**, and the first real objection came from **Friends of the Columbia Gorge**. It is about appearance: that Scenic Area rules imply a steel truss design, and that the concrete and the steel are the wrong color. Commissioner Arthur Babitz, who chairs the governance committee, called the response "both late and disturbing," saying it "seemingly wanted to reopen issues that have long been closed." A Bridge Aesthetics Committee was created in 2024 as a commitment under federal environmental review. It met five times between February and June, alongside a public open house, an online open house and a Spanish-language workshop, and produced an **Aesthetics Guidance Memorandum dated August 29, 2024**, addressed jointly to the Bridge Authority and the Gorge Commission. Its contents are a recommendation, to be squared with engineering requirements that emerge in the course of the project. Friends of the Columbia Gorge had a seat on that committee. Rudy Salakory is listed as its representative and attended three of the five meetings, including the four-hour design workshop in March 2024. The Authority is not planning to negotiate. It is planning to answer in writing, with what one commissioner described as "a simple paragraph or two from engineering on each of those issues." **On the truss, the answer is seismic.** A modern bridge of this span cannot be made earthquake-resilient as a steel truss. That is the whole reason this project exists: the 1924 bridge predates modern seismic standards and is vulnerable in a major quake, and the replacement is being built with deep reinforced foundations to survive one. A truss would reintroduce the problem the bridge is being replaced to solve. The bridge's form was settled in **October 2011**, by the [SR-35 Columbia River Crossing Study's Type, Size and Location report](https://rtc.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/Studies/SR35/docs/sr35ExecSum20111007.pdf?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), which weighed a steel plate girder, a concrete segmental box girder and a steel tied arch, and recommended the box girder. Cost carried 40 percent of the scoring, three times the weight given to aesthetics. **On color, the answer is concrete chemistry.** Tinting is possible across a thousand separate batches, but as staff put it, "you can do it, you're just not going to like the results." The [Management Plan](https://gorgecommission.org/about/management-plan/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) has a section written for this bridge alone, which exempts a replacement from the Scenic Area's general scenic rules and instead requires it to be "visually unobtrusive and harmonious," to use "recessive dark natural or earth-tone colors for steel components," and to employ "a thin and open structural design that allows views through it **to the extent practicable**." Both objections come from Friends' own interpretation of that text. Design concepts, including key engineering safety features, are currently posted [on the Bridge Authority's website](https://hoodriverbridge.org/project-updates/aub9f9gukmzureftcsx9mkt6kv7e6j?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). A second meeting with Friends of the Columbia Gorge is being arranged. And a note the public should have: because **Hood River County is reviewing this application**, Babitz has **recused himself from the land use side in his county role**. ### 🪨 Drilling done, and a lesson from Oregon City **Geotechnical exploration is finished.** Bent 11, the last hole, was drilled the week of August 17\. Rock came in close to predictions, so no big design change is expected. The Port lowered the drill rig from the bridge in under five hours and was due to collect it starting at 12:30 a.m. on August 27, closing out the overnight closures we flagged last month. Kiewit also showed the engineering committee its work on the [**Abernethy Bridge**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abernethy%5FBridge?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) at Oregon City, where it drilled shafts up to 250 feet into the Willamette. Two lessons landed. The good one: temporary steel casings let crews pour concrete year-round, outside the narrow in-water window. The sobering one: at Oregon City they poured off an existing bridge deck overhead. Here there is nothing overhead, so concrete trucks will ride barges for **14 to 15 hour continuous pours**. A commissioner supplied the footnote: in 1924, they built the current bridge with a wooden gangplank and a wheelbarrow. ### 🤝 Also in August - **Tribal agreements:** the Umatilla tribes and the Authority have both signed; Federal Highways' signature is pending. Meetings with the Yakama Nation were held August 17 and 19\. Nothing is scheduled yet with the Nez Perce or Warm Springs. - **Park land:** after months of stalemate, Oregon Parks has said verbally it will allow some self-mitigation, reducing what the project owes. Staff refused to celebrate without a letter in hand. *(Background:* [*$3.4M State Park Dispute Hits Bridge Project*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/3-4m-state-park-dispute-hits-bridge-project-hrws-bridge-authority-mar-26/)*.)* - **Land buying:** Federal Highways put it in writing that federal money cannot buy property from a member agency. Since the Port of Hood River is both a member and a landowner here, its parcel becomes a documented contribution instead of a sale. - **Politics:** the project briefed [**Scott Hege**](https://www.hegefororegon.com/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), a Wasco County commissioner and the Republican nominee for [Oregon House District 52](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon%27s%5F52nd%5FHouse%5Fdistrict?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), who faces Democrat Hank Sanders in November. That completes the Authority's round of briefings with Oregon legislative candidates. On the Washington side, an Olympia update day is planned for spring. --- ## ⚠️ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context **A federal watchdog has flagged the same review issue the commissioners did.** When Fox said he wanted to know what reviewers changed and why, that is not just a losing bidder's complaint. In 2025 the Government Accountability Office [audited this grant program's review process](https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-25-107227/index.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). In 26 of 45 applications it sampled, the reviewer's written narrative did not fully support at least one score. Reviewers were given no guidance on how to apply the criteria when deciding between "Recommended" and "Highly Recommended." And applicants told GAO the benefit-cost analysis was hard to do without economic expertise. None of that says anything about this application. It does say the Authority's instinct to ask how the score was built is reasonable. **The money supply moved the same day as the meeting.** While the board sat on August 10, the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill 90 to 6 that runs to December 11 and carries the [Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2026](https://aashtojournal.transportation.org/senate-cr-addresses-federal-transportation-funding/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). It keeps this bridge program funded at current levels but does not continue the infrastructure law's advance money, which was most of the program's budget. That is exactly what the Authority's federal lobbyist told the board that afternoon. It cuts both ways: a slice of the remaining fund could add to the pot, while the broader package [cuts federal highway and bridge investment by roughly $9.5 billion a year](https://www.artba.org/news/u-s-senate-poised-to-pass-funding-extension-with-highway-transit-program-cuts/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). The specific dollar figures the board was given came from its lobbyists and we could not confirm them independently. ## 🛠 Jargon Buster - **Benefit-cost ratio:** projected public benefits divided by cost. Above 1.0 means the math says it pays for itself. The Authority calculated 1.9; reviewers recalculated about 1.2. - **Test pile program:** driving a few temporary piles near the existing bridge and watching whether it moves, before committing to the roughly 700 that hold up the construction platform. - **Earned value:** a way of asking whether the work finished so far was worth what was spent on it. - **6(f):** a rule protecting park land bought with federal conservation money. Converting it to another use requires replacing it, which is what the Authority has been negotiating with Oregon Parks. --- ## 📅 How to Join & Learn More - **Next meeting:** Monday, September 14, 2026, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., HRWSBA Office, 1000 E Jewett Blvd Suite 204, White Salmon, and on Zoom. Watch for the August 24 minutes and any word on the Kiewit negotiation. - **Public comment** is taken at every regular meeting, three minutes per person. There was none in August, at any of the three meetings. - **Agendas, packets and recordings:** [hrwsba.gov](https://hrwsba.gov/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) and [hoodriverbridge.org](https://hoodriverbridge.org/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). Accessibility: 509-210-8440. - **Committees** meet publicly too, and in August that is where the real work happened. Engineering and Construction meets the first and third Wednesdays; Funding and Finance the first and third Thursdays. **A note on sourcing.** This edition is built from the Authority's own packets and minutes, which are the authority for names, votes and dollar figures, and from transcripts of the meeting recordings, cross-checked against notes from Columbia Gorge Documenters, powered by Uplift Local, taken by Lexus Archuleta (August 10) and Kathy Omer (August 24) and edited by Swen Carlson, used under CC BY 4.0: [upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters](https://upliftlocal.news/columbia-gorge/columbia-gorge-documenters/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io).