According to data from the federal government, there are dozens of bridges in Utah County that need attention.

State transportation experts say many of those bridges, however, have already gotten that attention.

The collapse of a major bridge in Minnesota has prompted officials to take a look at the state of bridges across the country, including in Utah where Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has asked for a review of the state's 200 highest priority bridges.

Two bodies were pulled from the wreckage of that collapsed bridge on Thursday, and another on Sunday, bringing the number of people who died in the Aug. 1 disaster to 12. The Associated Press reports that one person is still missing.

The most recent data, according to the Federal Highway Administration, shows 22 Utah County bridges are "structurally deficient" to varying degrees. But that data is already two years old, and many of the worst bridges have been repaired or are being repaired, says state bridge operations engineer Dave Eixenberger.

Take Provo's Center Street Interstate 15 bridge. According to the database, the bridge has a 36 percent sufficiency rating. But it was actually repaired last year at a cost of $3.2 million, as was the bridge at the Utah Lake State Park (32 percent) and the Ironton Interchange (40 percent).

Eixenberger said $40 million is usually spent each year on maintenance and replacement of the state's 2,800 bridges. The state Legislature also allotted $30 million in additional money this year for repairs or replacements of five bridges, including one on I-15 near Spanish Fork.

Even bridges not under the purview of the state and its dollars are being upgraded. Salem's bridge at 750 E. 900 South was worst locally on the Federal Highway Administration list with a 24 percent sufficiency rating. But by way of recent home development in the area, the city brought several companies together to pitch in and replace the 72-year-old bridge for about $250,000, said city engineer Bruce Ward. Construction is expected to be complete soon.

"That's what we're supposed to do, is do a good job," Ward said.

The state inspects each bridge every two years and "anything below 50" they watch a little more closely, said Eixenberger, who's been with the Utah Department of Transportation for 24 years, 15 of those in bridge design and maintenance.

In all that time, he said, he's unaware of any sort of collapse.

The state's good bridge safety record is also due in part because many of them are relatively new.

But the state's transformation from bucolic to booming is ensuring that more and more need to be built. The Legacy Highway through Davis County alone will have 38 bridges, Eixenberger said.

"Utah has a challenge of managing physical quality of it's existing bridges, but we're also managing growth at the same time."

Utah County is going to require plenty of road growth as populations in Saratoga Springs, Eagle Mountain and other cities continue to boom. Projects include I-15 and Redwood Road expansions, and two major east-west connectors just for starters.

There's no way of knowing exactly how many bridges will be needed, said Geoff Dupaix, a UDOT spokesman, only that it will be a lot.

To view the most recent data (though it may still be out of date) about bridge conditions in Utah and around the country, visit the interactive database at heraldextra.com/bridges.

Terminology

Sufficiency rating is essentially an overall rating of a bridge's fitness for the duty that it performs based on four factors, one of which is its Structural Evaluation. A low sufficiency rating may be due to structural defects, narrow lanes, low vertical clearance or any of many possible issues.

Structurally deficient is a status used to describe a bridge that has one or more structural defects that require attention. This status does not indicate the severity of the defect but rather that a defect is present.

Functionally obsolete is a status used to describe a bridge that is no longer by design functionally adequate for its task. A functionally obsolete bridge may be perfectly safe and structurally sound, but may be the source of traffic jams or may not have a high enough clearance to allow an oversized vehicle.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.