Help and Prayers Needed - Flood

Anyone out there have any experience building bridges? Private or for the county or anything like that? I'm looking for some help for my parents, who had a catastrophic failure of their culvert system that runs under the only access into and out of their property. Guidance, experience, knowledge, looking for any help we can get for them at this point. It's on private property, and not off a county road so the city, county, state, fed, insurance, etc. won't be providing any help. For context, the culvert that's there now is a 9 foot diameter by 38' long tanker car culvert. It's been more than enough for the last 6 years, and so far this year, in April and May the water was within inches of cresting the 8' wing walls, and then last Monday it went over the walls and then over the pipe by about 18". Looking for possible solutions, that will last, as they can't afford to keep throwing money at this when it could end up being temporary. Pic below for reference.

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Water Monday Night

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Aftermath

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Normal water moving through

have seen some impressive ones made from old railroad flat cars but my guess is your looking at a cool 100k to do what you want to do and thats doing a lot of the work yourself.

I have a creek crossing for my 4 wheelers and cows that is designed to be submerged during a flood and then be back usable after the water subsides, may not work for you as you would not have access for long periods of time but it is a lot cheaper than a regular bridge. its a 6 foot pipe that ends up about 2 foot above the road, the water normally passes thru but during a flood it goes over. have lots of riprap to keep the road base in place.

Yea not sure that would work for this, as they need to be able to get a fire truck across it in a pinch. They've looked into the rail car bridges as well, but as you mentioned, still a ton of work and money to get the site prepped for that.

Just bumping this for some more eyeballs.

That's a tough one..will a neighbor allow access? No, perhaps a concrete ford, dig it all out and concrete a longer low area to spread the water out and over the roadway and don't drive through the water except during storms.

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Maybe add another culvert on each side that is 3' diameter to handle high water conditions. Sounds like you don't need a lot more... or 4 of these https://www.theisens.com/products/dual-wall-culvert/ stagger the depth so it is only underwater during high water conditions

short of getting an excavator and dump trucks full of rock to build it up. I helped neighbor build a bridge over creek a few years ago with some large hickory trees and rough cut 2" thick oak for planking.

Any solution ain't gonna be cheap. The low water crossing will last a long time but does not address the need to cross when over-topped. Actually, considering what your wanting it to do (fire trucks, etc.) the cheapest would be the railroad flat car. After site prep, the total cost is buying and transporting the flat car. These critters are crazy strong. There is a guy down here that installed one and then drove fully loaded cement mixers over it. Good luck.

Up here in Minnesota and North Dakota they use almost all concrete sectional culverts.

The big ones are bigger in the middle, with a wider bottom than top. Come in 8' sections and bolt together.

But anything like that is going to cost an arm and a leg, and maybe an ear.
Surveying, excavation work, culverts, install cost + crane, then finish dirtwork, wing walls, etc.

I don't know of any way to build a bridge with low cost that would take a fire truck or even an ambulance.

Even county Hwy departments don't go around building bridges and replacing big culverts without state and or federal help.
Its just plain expensive.

yup very expensive unless you have your own excavator and dump truck, and lots of labor no matter how you do it.
if you have some large oak trees or other large straight very strong trees and something you can drag them around with that's about the cheapest way to go but won't last as long as steel or concrete.

A bridge would require abutments sturdy enough to withstand high water events. Apparently there is a good size tributary area above that culvert. Determining that area would be the first thing an engineer would do. If there has been significant development in that upstream watershed in recent years that could be the cause of the problem. Impervious surfaces such as pavement and roofs direct rainfall into the stream very quickly and that runoff needs to be detained and released slowly to prevent damage down stream.

I would recommend talking to the county engineer before building anything.

I am a big proponent of Rail Flat Cars for bridges!

The hang up is you will need good approaches and abutments to go with them.

Three44s

looking at the pictures you might just need to get a load of big rock to fill in what was washed out. good sized rock then a couple dozen bags of remix to fill in between them.
the culvert in my driveway is very similar and usually a couple times a year it floods to the point of water washing over driveway but the rocks that are on top of and surround the Culver prevent anything from washing away.
regardless you need to fill in what washed away so that next time there is high water it won't wash the driveway out

My family has a farm that borders a slough, and has a creek that runs through it the middle of the property. When my great grandpa was still alive, he always complained that they taxed him as though it was river front, when in reality this is a 10' wide creek that was dug to provide water to farmers over 100 years ago. Over time the creek filled in with muck, and flooded the cattails more every year. This was not farm land it was flooding, only wild land. We loved it, duck hunting was insane in that stuff.

One spring when it flooded, and great grandpa was into his late 80's at this point, and could not fix roads on his own anymore. Since he was pretty well fed up with taxes and idiots, he finally asked the MN DNR to come dredge out the river they taxed him on. The DNR came and did it. They came and dug out the entire creek, I remember it being so deep you couldn't hardly see the bottom. The water was always fairly clear, but before it might have been 2' deep, depending on the water, now it must be over 8' deep. Great grandpa was happy for a short time, until he realized it drained the little slough, as well as the cat tails. The ducks and geese barely showed up the next year. He regretted it the rest of his life. Now here we are about 20 years later, and the creek and swamp is finally getting back to where it used to be. The ducks and geese are back, and Mink, Beaver, and other animals are showing up again too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that #1, in MN the DNR controls all water. All water is public in MN, no matter if it is entirely surrounded by public land. I have no idea how OK is, but just because your creek is on private land, does not mean that your DNR is not responsible for the creek.

#2, be sure and think through whatever you do. You don't want to have the DNR show up and drain everything. You might have a bridge that will make it 50+ years with no maintenance, but at what cost?

If it were me, I'd do what I've always done, throw some dirt on it. That doesn't look that bad to me. A load of dirt every 6 years is pretty cheap.

As a girl scout project we helped some private landowners rip rap their private bridges/culverts to stop erosion. HOURS of laying basketball sized rocks by hand. They were all chosen ad fit so they interlocked. Then we added gravel on them to fill in the crevices. Those crossings are still there 45 years later! I know one goes under water during spring high water events, most they need to do is add more gravel to the road bed.

May I suggest something?. Check out any concrete plants in your area, or contractors that do driveways and other concrete work. You may get lucky and find a source of free concrete chunks from either the concrete plants or contractors. Check with the concrete plant to find out who's been doing contractor concrete work. May or may not work but it's something to consider. But find out who owns the water first. Shame to get your problem solved only to find out DNR or some other agency has jurisdiction and now you have to redo it to their specs. And get it in writing first. Frank

Thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions guys. Much appreciated. Most of those are ones we've already considered, but won't work for one reason or another. Digging it all out and creating a low water crossing would drop the road by another 14', and the creek is always moving some water, so maybe not the best option. They've already brought in free concrete blocks in the past to shore up the discharge side, but even those "free" blocks you have to pay someone to haul, and then the excavator work to get them into place. What equates to the DNR here has nothing to say about, neither does the County, City, water board, DEQ or Army Corps of Engineers.

Still working on coming up with the funds for the best solution, which at this point seems to be an actual bridge. Not cheap though when you make sure you have one built that a fire truck will cross.

Thanks again for the thoughts and prayers.

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Originally Posted by MaryB

Maybe add another culvert on each side that is 3' diameter to handle high water conditions. Sounds like you don't need a lot more... or 4 of these https://www.theisens.com/products/dual-wall-culvert/ stagger the depth so it is only underwater during high water conditions

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I think this is on the right track for the least expensive, permanent solution. Bring in a backhoe, dig it out, add more culverts or a larger culvert, cover it all up again, pave over. Only one piece of equipment required for the excavation. Cost of culvert(s). Blacktop contractor.

Maintaining a wide open waterway is important because the backside will silt up in flood conditions and reduce the flow. Ideally the entrance side of the culvert should be level to the stream and the exit side should be somewhat elevated above the stream bed to prevent obstruction.

DG

Local farmer got 2 semi flatbed trailers cheap that had bad axles and other issues. He stripped all the rolling gear off them, welded the cracked frames and set them side by side for a bridge. Wide enough for 2 cars to pass each other, he takes his monster tracked John Deere tractor over it... 40' long so it will span a decent distance. Think he made 5' wide concrete abutments on each end with pockets for the trainer frames to drop into. The flatbeds were really cheap with the problems they had, he said he put less than $3k into it including concrete.

If you have only little Money, you have to have a strong Back, access to a lot of big Rocks, big Timber and Time.
Look at the way they build Bridges in the 1800, and Bridges thy build when the Alaska Highway was originally build.

Cheers