Rotting pilings have made the Zollingers Hill bridge unsafe at any weight, forcing the state to close the bridge, an official with state’s Office of State Aid Construction said.

State Aid officials notified the city they were ordering Zollingers Hill bridge, which was built in the late 1980s, closed Friday morning.

John McKee with Stantec, which inspects the bridge every two years, said he disagreed with the State Aid consultants’ decision and wanted to meet with the consultants who prepared the report. Representatives for Stantec were at the bridge examining the pilings Monday morning, but McKee said Monday afternoon he had not received their report.

“It’s a two-span bridge, which means it has two embankments and one set of pilings right in the middle. Those are timber pilings, and one of them has been crushed, because it has been rotted out, and the others have between 50 and 70 percent loss,” said Lannie Glover with State Aid.

“The consultants that have inspected it have looked at it and have done the calculations on the load the bridge can carry, and it’s not sufficient to keep that bridge open,” he said.

Three tons, Glover said, is the minimum weight a bridge can support to stay open under state regulations. City public works director Garnet Van Norman said the bridge’s usual weight limit is eight tons.

Glover said the timbers usually rot from the inside, adding, “If it’s a 10-inch piling, then you have 7 inches (rotting) in the middle, so you have an inch-and-a-half wall holding up the whole bridge. Outside, you can see it (the wood), but inside, it’s missing.”

He said creosote pilings usually last for about 20 years. And Zollingers Hill isn’t the only bridge with bad pilings. The problem, Glover said, is statewide.