Red Tape Delays Work on Buckled Main Street Bridge : Roads: Ventura officials say environmental reviews are needed before permits can be issued. Experts recommended that repairs be done before the rainy season to safeguard river wildlife.

Public works crews will not be able to make repairs to the buckled Main Street Bridge before the rainy season because city officials still have not completed the necessary environmental reviews.

That means that the two-lane bridge, which was severely damaged during the fierce March rains but is now open on a temporary basis, will not be completely rebuilt until at least June, and more probably late next year.

Officials had planned to fully reopen the roadway before the winter months but have been delayed by their inability to secure the necessary permits.

“In doing an environmental analysis and checking with the permitting agencies, we’re constrained to actually doing the work between August and November,” City Engineer Rick Raives said Monday.

“We’re not going to make it in that time frame,” he said.

To minimize potential danger to birds, fish and other species in the riverbed ecosystem, state and federal biologists determined that construction should be done after July, when summer water flows typically trickle to a minimum, and before the winter rains.

“We knew we had a tight time frame, with all the permitting having to come together in a short time,” Raives said. “We were trying to get it done this year and we just fell short of time.”

A 30-day public review of a plan to minimize any environmental damage from the construction just began this week, said Mark Capelli, executive director of the Friends of the Ventura River watchdog group.

“Everyone would prefer to have it done and be done with, but that’s not the situation they’re in,” Capelli said. “But as a practical matter, I don’t think it’s good that they start in the middle of the rainy season.”

The Ventura River is home to several threatened or endangered species, including least Bell’s vireos, birds that nest in the thick vegetation along the river, and tidewater gobies, bottom-dwelling fish less than two inches long that forage in the lagoon just downstream from the bridge.

Native plants along the riverbed also could be jeopardized by the long-planned heavy construction.

“One of the things that can happen when you’re working in water is there can be sedimentation, where silt goes downstream due to the construction,” said Trudi Ingram, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist.

“That can change the quality of the habitat for the fish in the lagoon and make it inhospitable,” she said.

When rising floodwaters cracked the thick concrete structure last March, city engineers went to work designing both a quick-fix and a long-term remedy to the broken bridge.

By the end of March, Public Works Director Ron Calkins recommended to the City Council that the city do two things: hire a crew to make interim repairs that would allow a single lane of traffic to use the span and also design permanent improvements.

J & H Engineering of Camarillo was paid $68,000 to fix the upstream side of the bridge, which is the only link between Santa Barbara and Ventura for thousands of bicyclists.

Work crews completed that job and the road has been open to traffic and bicyclists since the end of April. An interim traffic signal stops northbound motorists while southbound drivers pass, and vice versa.

Contractors were able to complete that job during the spring months by working only from the bridge deck and avoiding entering the riverbed, Raives said.

But the more expensive prospect of repairing the buckled portion of the overpass has not yet begun.

Raives said his engineers estimated it would cost about $730,000 to repair the river crossing and another $250,000 to retrofit the structure for earthquakes.

Federal emergency funds would cover the nearly $1-million cost of repairing and retrofitting the bridge, he added.

Raives said waiting until next year to complete the repair project would cause few problems for commuters.

“Since we concentrated on getting the bridge open for two-way traffic, the emergency is off,” Raives said. “I’ve been through there many times. There aren’t any long lines and the signal system works well.”

Ingram, the federal biologist, agreed: “If we can figure out the best time to do the construction and the best time to minimize sedimentation downstream, I don’t think there’s going to be any major problems.”