SEATTLE - You don't usually see a tent, refreshments and a crowd at a signing of an environmental study, but today's ceremony on the banks of the Duwamish River marks the end of one its landmarks.
Federal, state and county leaders all signed off on the last step toward removing and replacing the aging South Park Bridge, which links Seattle's industrial core to Tukwila and other communities.
The bridge is living on borrowed time.
"It's hanging in there, but every time we have a quake, it gets damaged a little more and it's time to take care of it," said King County bridge engineer Timothy Lane as he took us down below the nearly 80-year-old structure.
Down there you can hear the cars loudly zipping across the bridge's steel grate and see the old bridge shake from top to bottom.
"When the bridge was built in 1930, they didn't drive the piles deep enough, so we never got down to the glacial till or the hard pan," explained Lane.
An estimated 20,000 cars pass over the unique bridge every day and the toll is adding up. The decades' old concrete is dissolving and chipping away, the metal is rusting, the ancient electronics and engine parts are failing and almost impossible to replace.
The South Park Bridge is dying of old age and engineers say they can no longer trust it or keep up with its maintenance demands.
Today's agreement seals its fate, but the project will be expensive. King County has applied for $99 million in federal grant money and expects to find out early next year if it gets it. If not, the funding will have to be found elsewhere.
The bridge withstood 80 years of heavy traffic and a couple of large earthquakes, but experts say it cannot be depended on to carry the load much longer.
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