A pair of local bridge replacements slated for this spring and summer have been delayed indefinitely. According to Brendan Mullane, manager of the Leelanau County Road Commission (LCRC), a federal funding freeze instituted by President Trump is impacting the department’s plans to replace a pair of aging culverts on Cedar Run Creek, one at White Road and the other at Alpine Road. Mullane isn’t sure when those projects will move forward – or whether the bill will now have to be footed by local taxpayers rather than federal funds.

The White and Alpine bridge replacements were intended as part of a larger partnership between LCRC, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (GTB), and a local nonprofit called the Conservation Resource Alliance (CRA) to replace deteriorating road-stream crossings in Leelanau County. That project has gotten significant attention for a series of bridge replacements along Crystal River, including the removal of the famous “shoot-the-tubes” culverts under County Road 675 last fall (pictured, before and after). While there are two more Crystal River culverts scheduled to be replaced this year, project partners were also ready to move forward to other rivers and streams, including Cedar Run Creek.

LCRC put out a bid package in November seeking contractors interested in removing the White and Alpine culverts and replacing them with new timber bridges. On January 21, LCRC members voted to accept a bid from the Honor-based AJ’s Excavating. According to Mullane, the total construction cost was going to be just over $1,094,000, including $553,929 for Alpine Road and $540,213.60 for White Road. The bid from AJ’s came in $300,000 under every other bid.

The sticking point? Most of the money for the $1 million project was to come from a pair of federal funding sources: Natural Resources Conservation Services, a branch of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“As far as I understand, the USDA funding was put on hold, and we don’t know for how long,” Mullane tells the Leelanau Ticker. “That money is a pretty critical part of our funding for this project. So, even though we’d already put the project out for bid, signed an agreement with the contractor, and were ready to order materials two weeks ago, once we got the notice that the funding was on hold, we had to pump the brakes.”

Mullane announced at last Tuesday’s LCRC board meeting that the bridge projects were very likely delayed. Speaking to The Ticker following a Friday morning meeting with CRA, though, he confirmed that the partners have decided to hold off on any contract or materials spending – a decision that will push the projects off the 2025 schedule. According to bid documents, work on the bridges was set to begin on or around May 5 and to complete by October 12.

“If the funding freeze had only lasted a week or two, then we could have absorbed that delay and still constructed the crossings this year,” says DJ Shook, a biologist and senior project manager with the CRA. “But the meeting [Friday] was just to confirm that we're going to have to go to next year, assuming this funding eventually does get unpaused.”

Traverse City-based CRA is the local nonprofit behind River Care, an ambitious program that “fills project funding gaps and leverages federal dollars to complete critical work in each watershed” across a 15-county service region. In recent years, a major focus of the organization has been on replacing infrastructure at river and stream crossings in order to restore waterways to their natural flow and size. Beyond the Crystal River projects, CRA was also behind a multi-year project on the Boardman River to replace an aging, undersized culvert at Broomhead Road with a new timber bridge.

“There are thousands of these undersized road-stream crossings throughout the state,” Shook says, explaining that small culverts speed up river flows in a way that is detrimental both to wildlife and infrastructure. On the wildlife front, fish attempting to travel upstream to find habitats that are safer or more conducive to reproduction are often stymied by culverts and the way they accelerate currents. Shook also says high-velocity waters at small culverts “put stress and pressure” on those parts of a river or stream, which accelerates erosion.

Because of erosion, Mullane says the Alpine and White crossings are deteriorating quickly and will need to be replaced soon. The only question now is whether the bill will be footed through federal funding or by local taxpayers.

“These culverts are pretty old, and are near the end of their service life already,” Mullane says. “That isn’t the primary reason for the project – fish passage is the primary goal – but it is a big benefit. These crossings are going to have to be replaced someday, and it’s going to have to happen sooner than later. So this funding is a great opportunity, and it would help the residents of this county, above and beyond the fish and ecological impacts.”

Although the Alpine and White crossings are on hold, locals can still expect work to proceed as planned on a pair of remaining culvert replacement projects on Crystal River. Mullane confirms work is still on schedule for “Crossings 1 and 2” near the intersection of County Road 675 and M-22 in Glen Arbor where 675 bisects Crystal River. One of those bridges will be replaced this spring or early summer, while the other will be handled in late summer or early fall.

A pair of other culvert projects, – one where South Cedar Road crosses over Cedar Run Creek, the other where Good Harbor Trail bisects Victoria Creek – are likely to be delayed, Mullane says. Those projects were slated for next year.