Before the Interstate 35W bridge in downtown Minneapolis collapsed last year, state transportation officials had put off recommendations from experts to make it safer, failed to follow their own inspection policies and at times allowed financing concerns to affect how it was maintained, a team of investigators told Minnesota lawmakers in a report Wednesday.þþThe investigators were severely critical of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, which was responsible for maintaining the bridge. The 40-year-old span, one of the busiest in the state, had been deemed in “poor” condition during regular inspections over 17 consecutive years, they found, before it fell into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, killing 13 people and injuring 145.þþThe report was compiled by Gray Plant Mooty, a Minneapolis law firm retained by a joint committee of the Legislature to study the collapse. The authors emphasized that their findings were intended not to point to a cause of the disaster but rather to review the State Transportation Department’s handling of the bridge, a way of perhaps avoiding future calamities. Finding the ultimate cause, they said, will be left to the National Transportation Safety Board.þþThat board has not completed its report. But its public statements and recommendations to bridge owners since the collapse clearly indicate that its investigators believe the problem was a design error when the I-35W span was being planned in the 1960s, compounded by the extra weight of equipment placed on the bridge last year for construction work.þþIn their 84-page report, the investigators laid out a pattern of missed opportunities and policy violations: inspection reports that failed to quantify the severity of corrosion, officials who later said they had not known that their duties included reviewing such inspections and a lack of special provisions for where heavy equipment should be placed for the construction work.þþAmong Minnesota officials, debate over the chief cause — a design flaw versus some failure to maintain the bridge adequately — has evolved into a partisan political battle. Some lawmakers in the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which controls the Legislature, have blamed Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, and his Transportation Department, saying they failed to support sufficient appropriations for roads and bridges.þþ“It appears that some of what was happening was due to a lack of funding and communication problems,” said State Representative Bernie Lieder, a Democrat who is co-chairman of the committee that assigned the investigation. “You have to say that the governor bears some responsibility.”þþAsked about the report, Brian McClung, a spokesman for Mr. Pawlenty, noted that the cause had yet to be found and that the safety board’s initial findings pointed not to the maintenance and inspection questions laid out in the report but to a design flaw. þþ“Until the cause of the collapse is determined,” Mr. McClung said, “it is not possible to know whether anything in this report is relevant to the bridge collapse.”þþOfficials at the state transit agency said they were still reviewing the report and could not comment further. Tom Sorel, the state transportation commissioner, told legislators that he wanted to assure residents that “bridges throughout our state are safe and sound,” adding that the department’s “inspection and maintenance of state bridges meets or exceeds federal guidelines and standards.”þþMr. Sorel recently succeeded Carol Molnau, who remains lieutenant governor but was ousted from her other job as transportation commissioner in February after years of criticism about the department’s performance and, more recently, much negative attention over the bridge collapse.þþ
Source: NY Times
