The historical State Line Bridge on the Kankakee River has attracted many snags over the decades, obstructing the flow of water. The last remaining bureaucratic snag before the bridge can be removed is a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission Executive Director Scott Pelath said Thursday he hopes the bridge will be able to be removed later this year. The bridge is on the agenda for the commission’s meeting in LaPorte on Tuesday.
“We have worked to remove obstructions from the river, and many of those obstructions happen at the bridges during high water events,” he said.
State Line Bridge has attracted more attention than others. “It sits so low over the channel, it’s antiquated, and it attracts woody debris,” Pelath said. “There’s been desires to remove that bridge for decades, really.”
Already, the commission has permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the other agencies that needed to sign off on the bridge’s removal.
Interest in preserving the bridge is high, although no one has come forward yet with the financial commitment needed to relocate and rebuild it.
“It’s growing increasingly unsafe, even for foot traffic, where it is,” Pelath said. “There’s a whole multitude of flood hazard and safety reasons” for its removal.
Pelath understands the need to keep pushing for the Corps permit. “There’s a risk during a flood event that it would be removed altogether, and then it becomes a salvage operation,” he said.
Removing the bridge will be done carefully, with two cranes used to walk it off the river. Then the bridge will be dismantled and stored in a secure location for future use elsewhere. “It will be numbered so everyone knows which part goes with which piece,” Pelath promised.
So who gets the bridge and where will it be placed? That requires a combination of both interest and funding. “I hope that happens at some time, but until then, we’ll keep it in a responsible place,” he said.
The consensus, in the meantime, is that if you want to preserve the bridge for historic reasons, you don’t want it to remain where it is, Pelath said.
Removing the bridge will improve the flow of water on the Kankakee and lessen the need for crews to repeatedly remove logjams there. Other bridges trap debris, but this one does at the exact moment you can’t remove it, Pelath said.
State Line Bridge isn’t the only bridge the commission has had in its sights.
Earlier, the commission removed part of a Norfolk Southern bridge between Lake and Newton counties, near U.S. 41. The antiquated bridge’s old wooden supports continually trapped debris, requiring crews to clear it three or four times a year, Pelath said.
When Indiana Gov. Mike Braun was a U.S. senator, his office helped make that happen. Norfolk Southern was very helpful, Pelath added.
Pelath inspected river conditions following Tuesday night’s violent storms.
“The river was really relatively unaffected,” he said. “It just shows you the concentrated, effective power of those tornadoes.”
The Kankakee had been low for a number of months, which allowed it to absorb the heavy rains.
“Now if you get hammered with a lot more rain, we always have to know, too, that situations can change,” Pelath warned.
“Certainly, the river is up. It’s slated to go up to action stage at various places along the river, but that is not unusual at this time of year,” he said. The last major flood was in 2018.
“Many of the people who live along the river are pretty experienced in their own right at persevering in those types of conditions,” he said.
In St. Joseph County, some residents are concerned about the flow of water into the Kankakee River from the construction of a giant $11 billion Amazon data center complex at New Carlisle.
Amazon seeks to pump 35 million gallons of water a day for 546 days to dewater the site for the next buildings at the site, Elkhart-based WVPE reported. The water would be dumped into the Niespodziany Ditch, a tributary of the Kankakee.
“The commission has invested in a study in partnership with the (St. Joseph County) Redevelopment Commission in connection with the downstream impact,” Pelath said.
The study provides a hydraulic model for discharges, water usage and other issues.
“We’ve striven to be supportive of the county to be able to make good decisions,” Pelath said. “There’s development going on throughout the watershed all the time.”
Counties’ stormwater management teams understand this and try to build in detention/retention on the front end, he said.
There’s some concern about areas adjacent to the ditch. Culverts go underneath the Canadian National Railroad tracks, and the water can go through the culverts only so quickly.
“This situation isn’t coming up only in New Carlisle. It’s happening all over the place,” Pelath said.
“That actually ties into State Line Bridge a little bit,” in the need to remove the bridge that impedes the flow of water in the Kankakee River.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
