Warren County’s response to a U.S. Coast Guard request for information regarding inspections and engineering reports on the old U.S. 80 bridge might come with a price, bridge commissioners said Wednesday.

A letter in May from the Coast Guard’s Office of Bridge Administration asked the commission for general information regarding the lateral movement of bridge piers over time using the most recent inspection reports. It also asked about the county’s plans for the 78-year-old bridge.

Fees charged by HNTB, the bridge’s contracted structural engineering firm, to reproduce inspection reports on CD-ROM would total about $5,000, superintendent Herman Smith said. The five-member board voted to continue working with HNTB to supply the information, with detailed stipulations as to how it could be produced.

“The commission feels it’s too much to do someone else’s work,” Smith said after the county-appointed bridge panel met.

A branch of the armed forces, the Coast Guard protects U.S. interests and economic security risks in the nation’s waterways and in international maritime regions. Calls to its Washington, D.C., headquarters were not returned.

In motioning for the letter, commissioner Tom Hill asked there be “a proviso we have reimbursements for our services.”

Inquiries as to the bridge’s stability coincides with recent barge strikes to the bridge – five between March 26 and May 3 during the highest river stages recorded since 1973 – and some renewed attention to bridge engineering after preliminary federal investigations found design flaws in the Interstate 35 bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis which collapsed in August 2007.

Pier 2, the first large pier from the Mississippi bank, had been shifting west for about a decade until no further movement was found in the bridge’s annual stability report for 2007. Two bids were taken Wednesday to reposition the wind-shear pendulum and replace bearings, ending a yearlong process of cost and scope analysis. Shreveport-based Shiloh Construction’s $627,670 offer was accepted pending legal and engineering reviews. A single, previous bid had come in two-thirds higher than its $593,000 cost estimate.

The bridge has been declared structurally sound overall in past annual inspections, usually released during autumn.

Overdue rail tolls charged to Kansas City Southern Railway had an effect on the commission’s ability to pay basic bills, commissioners said. Most recently, a $193,000 payment reflecting February and March’s rail traffic arrived in May. However, no amount has been received for April and May, Smith said.

It prompted the board to approve a transfer of $60,000 from a money market account to a checking account usually used for paying down construction projects in varying stages. For the fiscal year, $925,284.75 has been collected from KCS, ahead of forecasts of about $1.2 million in toll money.

About $740,000 of a $1.5 million pool of funds in this year’s budget has been spent for structural repair work, Smith said. Total spending has reached $1.5 million so far this year.

This year’s river floods delayed indefinitely most major work to the bridge, most notably to replace concrete on the bridge’s former roadbed and further stabilization of soil on the Mississippi bank.