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Crews Make Progress On Rehab Of Landmark Eads Bridge

Eads Wide View Over the Mississippi
Metro Transit

The massive rehabilitation of the landmark Eads Bridge should be complete by early 2016. Officials say they are at the half-way point and the $40 million project remains on budget.

Eads Bridge intrastructure
Credit Metro Transit
A view of the support structure for the Eads Bridge that goes over the Mississippi River to link St. Louis and East St.Louis.

Crews have been blasting away at 140 years of paint and corrosion on the span over the Mississippi River linking St. Louis and East St. Louis.

"So much of it that I will tell you it looks brand new," said John Nations, president of the Bi-State Development Agency, which operates Metro Transit and is overseeing bridge maintenance.

"And it’s kind of interesting because when they were actually doing it they thought, OK, we are finally going to figure out what steel was made of in 1874. They sent it out for testing and it came back as unknown alloy."

The Eads is named after its construction manager and designer James B. Eads. It opened in 1874 and used to be known as the St. Louis Bridge.

"It went into operation before the shootout at the OK Corral," said Nations, who added it is believed to be the oldest span in use over the Mississippi.

Eads Bridge, Mississippi River
Credit Wayne Pratt, St. Louis Public Radio
A view of the Mississippi River from the Metro Transit line on the Eads Bridge.

The federal government is contributing more than $37 million to the project.

About $25 million of that comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the federal stimulus package that was passed in 2009 with the hopes of helping the country recover from the recession.

"This is exactly the type of project that these ARRA funds were designed to support," said Mokhtee Ahmad, administrator of Region 7 for the Federal Transit Administration. He attended an event in East St. Louis Wednesday to update the progress.

"I was really impressed with all the hard hats and everybody that was working and the amount of employment that this federal investment had created." 

Officials say the project is supporting more than 300 jobs in various trades including painters, ironworkers and carpenters.

Wayne is the morning newscaster at St. Louis Public Radio.