County Closes Bridge West of Steele City
By Gordon Hopkins
Jefferson County Commissioners voted to hard close the bridge west of Steele City due to safety concerns on Tuesday, September 16, 2025. An engineering inspection determined it is unsafe.
The bridge crosses the Little Blue River on Romeo Road.
Terry Blas of the Highway Department told commissioners, “The sub floor is rotted and the planks that come across won’t stay bolted down. They come up, work up, and they crack in the middle.”
The Jefferson County Highway Department has been repairing the bridge as needed but due to the poor condition, it has been an uphill, and very expensive, battle.
“I put $16,000 worth of repairs on that bridge,” said Blas, which elicited a groan from commissioners. “Wood planks cost me $10 a foot right now. So, it’s $200 for a 20-foot plank.”
“To go down there and fix it, the plank for the sub floor would cost $29,415. There’s 111 planks to go across that bridge. It would all need to be replaced, and then that’s not counting the top deck,” said Blas.
Commissioner Mark Schoenrock noted the bridge is already scheduled to be shut down and a new bridge already planned. He serves as Jefferson County representative on the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) project management team for the new bridge, “We are on schedule to go out for bids next fall of 2026 for the new bridge. But then construction on that new bridge probably won’t start until 2027 so this would be a fairly long-term closure.”
Commissioners agreed continuing repairs on a bridge already scheduled to be replaced was not cost-effective. Schoenrock said, “The safety concerns on that bridge bill are to the point where they’re really bad, and we really cannot justify using taxpayer money trying to keep that bridge operational for just a few months.”
