The City of Centralia will repair five bridges it maintains across the Centralia Canal in Yelm through the Yelm Hydroproject thanks to a unanimous vote by the city council Tuesday night.
Yelm residents living across the bridges have long shared concerns about reduced services, namely emergency services, to their homes due to a weight capacity rating that is too low for fire engines and other vehicles to cross.
The Centralia council previously voted in August to approve a contract amendment with Sargent Engineers to evaluate and provide options to strengthen the bridges, but permitting had delayed work on the bridges.
In 2023, Sargent Engineers evaluated the six bridges because of a request by the Southeast Thurston County Fire Authority. As a result, all six bridges were rated at 13 to 15 tons, and the fire department sent letters to residents that their services may be reduced.
City staff repaired one of the six bridges the following year and it has since been approved for unrestricted use. With the council’s vote Tuesday, staff will work to provide similar repairs for the remaining five bridges for a cost of $1 million.
Centralia General Manager M.L. Norton said the bridges’ weight capacity rating is “not even half of what a fire truck with water in it weighs.” For the repaired Lindsay Spooner bridge, city staff put a foundation down on the canal bottom, supported it with steel braced against the bridge and removed the load restriction. He said Sargent Engineers has designed a similar plan for the five remaining bridges.
Norton said the Centralia City Light Department and the City of Yelm have “adequate reserves and adequate permission to move funds around” to be able to cover the $1 million cost. He added that the option the council chose is the most cost effective to upgrade the bridges as it will be done in one contract.
City Engineer Patty Page said construction on each bridge could take three to four weeks, but the only holdup could be from approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which Norton described as being typically slow in responding.
“There’s a FERC aspect to this. I think a strategy we can use that may very well work is to say this is important to people’s lives, and we think you should give us extra attention to get this approved because we simply want to help the folks on the other side,” Norton said.
Page said that even with the council moving to repair the bridges, construction may not begin this fire season because of FERC’s permitting. Therefore, construction is estimated to start in 2026 based on Sargent Engineers’ design and FERC’s design approval and permission to proceed.
Two residents who live in or near Yelm, Anne Wahrmund and Kathy Miller, spoke to the council about how the weight capacity rating has impacted their livelihoods. Miller, who lives across the Matthews bridge in Yelm, said she has owned property for nearly 40 years. When she purchased the property, she raised seven top-show cattle, which she showed at the national level, and said she had no issues then with large trucks crossing the bridges to provide feed and equipment.
“I have retired now, but those same trucks currently would no longer be able to cross, limiting even agricultural use of the property,” Miller said. “In late February of this year, my well pump started experiencing issues, so I contacted a contractor to pull the pump and replace it. I received a call from him stating he could not cross the bridge as his truck was too heavy. Fortunately, he was kind enough to find a competitor with a smaller truck that could cross the bridge and could do the repair.”
Matt Russell, Southeast Thurston County Fire Authority assistant fire marshal, told The Chronicle after the vote that he was “incredibly pleased” with the direction the council took to repair the bridges.
“I was hoping it was going to go that way. I don’t know the council members. I know for the City of Centralia, a very small section of homes in Yelm are going to be affected by this. I could see how they could just push it on down the line, but they didn’t do that,” Russell said. “I’m overjoyed at the moment. We’ve been trying to figure out how to crack this egg for over a year now. It sounds like it’s not going to happen overnight, but we know it’s going to happen.”
Russell said the department had to go six months without having an option to get a structural firefighting apparatus over the bridges, and while they have a few options now, they’re not sustainable. He added that the options attach an extra 15 to 20 minutes in an emergency situation.
On two occasions, the department had to perform CPR over the bridges, stopping the fire trucks before the bridges and shuttle people in a pickup truck back and forth to the fire truck, Russell said. Luckily, both people were saved in those situations, but he said the council’s actions will shave off the inconvenience.
