1900s-era bridge being dismantled on Kankakee River

You're looking at a bridge here built around 1900. It's being taken apart on the Kankakee River right where Indiana meets Illinois. The commission in charge of the river says it traps debris and makes floods worse. Governor Mike Braun is expected at the ceremony this afternoon to celebrate the project. Scott Pluck is leading the commission that is taking the bridge down. And he can tell us more about why one old bridge has been such a problem. Thanks for being with us on The Loop. Hey, thank you so much for having me. We're very excited today. We had this decades-long flood obstruction for folks here in Indiana. This bridge has actually been closed to traffic since 1999, and it traps every bit of debris that goes down the Kankakee River. Regrettably, it only sits about two feet above the channel most of the time, and we can't remove the debris at the exact moment that we're having flood conditions. So having the safety hazard out of the way will be certainly a benefit to the folks in Indiana. But I wanna say it'll be a benefit to the folks in Illinois too. Because one of these days, a flood is gonna take out this antiquated bridge and wash it into Illinois. And we don't want that to happen either. It also would be nice to have boaters be able to go back and forth underneath the bridge and enjoy each other's natural resources and fishing populations and so forth. Folks have drowned out here before. It's a very important project to have done, and I'm grateful that the folks in Indiana have made it possible. Yeah, let's talk more about the project and the process of it all. How do you take apart a bridge that old without breaking it? Well, that's why we have professionals here. Our contractors are going to lift the bridge very carefully. They're going to move it onto land in the adjacent area. The good thing is because there's a lot of emotional attachment to this bridge and some historic aspects to it. So it's not going to be sent away for scrap. It's going to be carefully disassembled, labeled, and we hope it'll be reassembled somewhere for the public's enjoyment where they can safely look at it and walk across it because it's a pretty cool structure. So if anybody is out there looking for a historic bridge to put back together, just know that we'll have it here. That would be it would be nice over like a local pond or something like that. That's what we're hoping. Yeah. When will people see a difference on the river you think? Well, some of the things will be almost immediate. When we get blockages here at this bridge, the water starts to creep around the bridge and get into some adjacent areas on land. We have to remove debris several times a year. thing for the folks in Illinois you know rivers carry debris um particularly you know we had these tornadoes recently heavy branches and so forth enter the waterway but when you have it when you have it hung up you don't get a natural distribution of those sorts of things and they create blockages that just keep moving downstream yeah i i hear two farmers have had some issues uh dealing with the bridge as well what do they tell you about it well they're they're enthused they know that this has created a lot of localized flooding on the Kankakee River in the past you have to remember on this river the difference between a major flood stage and minor flood stage is only a couple of feet so inches really matter and when you're holding back a few inches of water because of an obstruction like this, it could mean real property damage and hazards to human safety. I mentioned Governor Mike Braun will be at this celebration. Who else are you expecting? We're expecting some of our friends from over in Illinois. We're expecting some Indiana state lawmakers. And sadly, one of our commission members who was instrumental in this project just passed away within the last two weeks and we will be memorializing him here as well sorry to hear that i'm sorry to hear that uh uh looking forward to all the changes and i'm sure everyone out there impacted by the floods and and the farmers too are looking forward to all this as well scott thanks so much for joining us