Grundy County approves $425,615 for engineering on Dresden Road over cooling flumes

The Grundy County Board approved a $425,615 bid to Willett Hofmann and Associates on Tuesday, Aug. 13, for engineering on Dresden Road over the cooling flumes near the Dresden cooling lakes.

County Engineer Eric Gibson said $425,615 is a rather large engineering agreement that had to be put together at the last minute because $95,000 in township bridge program funding soon would lapse without it.

“Right now, it’s costing the township annually anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 annually to inspect it,” Gibson said. “We have to do inspections during their shutdown. It’s a lot of coordination with the nuke plant and the [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]. We have to have several people out there, multiple people in boats. It’s an all-day event.”

With this study, the county will look at potentially realigning the bridge to make it more feasible to inspect, shorten the span, and potentially shorten the construction or minimize construction cost.

Gibson said the county also submitted for bridge improvement project funding from the federal government that would fund 80% of the total project cost, which could end up being about $6.5 million.