The Georgia Department of Transportation released information Tuesday regarding construction of the new Lake Strom Thurmond bridge connecting McCormick County to Lincoln County, Georgia.
The 1,680-foot U.S. Highway 378 bridge is 67 percent complete and is expected to be finished in March 2017, according to Corbett S. Reynolds, a GDOT district construction engineer in Tennille, Georgia. Engineering work is currently taking place.
The more than $20 million bridge will be 44 feet wide and have two travel lanes in each direction with shoulders. The bridge will still serve as the only east-west connection between the two counties. McCormick County residents can also cross the state line in the southern part of the county in Clarks Hill to go to Columbia County, Georgia.
“It’s going to be higher than what it used to be, which can allow some of the sailboats at Savannah Lakes Marina and Soap Creek Marina to go up (the lake) in the other direction,” said Sherry E. McKellar, executive assistant at the Lincoln County Development Authority in Lincolnton, Georgia, who is currently substituting for the authority director who is on maternity leave.
McKellar said the marinas typically stay busy during spring, summer and fall. She said the new bridge should open up more tourism possibilities at Elijah Clark State Park and at campgrounds north of the highway.
For McCormick County Administrator Columbus Stephens, the bridge construction signals potential for economic development at Savannah Lakes Village and for land the county is eyeing in Plum Branch to lure business activity.
“By putting the extra lanes in, people that normally stay away would have no problem coming in this direction, especially if we start doing some other economic development initiatives in this area,” Stephens said. “There will pretty much be easy access (to the county from the west).”
The current two-lane bridge is still open for traffic as construction commences with barges and cranes. The bridge was built in the late 1950s, Reynolds said.
“It’s just at the end of its service life and it’s up for the replacement,” Reynolds said. “It got to where it needed to be replaced.”
Preliminary engineering work began in 2003 for the project with right-of-way work starting in 2007. Construction began in April 2010 but in summer 2013 work was halted when cracks were found in the foundation for new support columns.
Scott Bridge Co. of Opeilka, Alabama, is contracted to construct the new bridge.
The old bridge will eventually be torn down and its broken concrete pieces will be submerged in the lake to create artificial reefs on each side of the South Carolina-Georgia border, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this summer.
McKellar said Lincoln County has committed to using land the present bridge is on once it is torn down for a county-maintained fishing pier.
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