ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — “Getting back onto the Island is very important after an evacuation,” Pat Hickok said. Hickok is Senior Vice President/Construction Engineering Director of FIGG Bridge Builders.More returning routes are needed, he said. Assessment of damages, passage clearance, restoration of utilities and services are immediately needed after a hurricane. Evacuation from Hurricane Ivan required 17 hours before safe areas were reached. Since Ivan there has been over 10% growth in population and traffic and by 2030 the growth may exceed several hundred percent.

A short term solution may be the extension of Orange Beach Express to Perdido Beach Boulevard to the south and north to Interstate 10 along County Road 83, Hickok said. The long range solution will be the Wolf Bay Bridge and a corridor to the Interstate, hooking up with County Road 87 at County Road 20 and preparing the correct segments to extend the corridor.

The bridge itself, approximately 4600 feet, will have a 365 foot span with channel of over 12 feet for larger traffic and adjacent pier spans for smaller traffic. One design possibility is for two 12 foot lanes with 8 foot shoulders which can serve as hiking/biking trails and in times of evacuation could provide 3 lanes in on direction. Hickok showed photos of distinguished bridges in Florida and in western states which showed utility and “design charette” which displayed linear ecology and mosaic tiles. Bridges can display history and culture as in a bridge in Montana designed for the Crow Indians. These possibilities exist for the bridge over Wolf Bay.

On a practical demonstration of FIGG construction, Hickok showed photos of the serious damage done by Hurricane Ivan to Interstate 10 bridge over Pensacola Bay while the FIGG-built CSXT Bridge was in service the following day.

The real question is “Who will pay for this bridge and corridor?” The Alabama Department of Transportation says “We can’t,” and the city alone cannot fund it. So the recourse is to banks, bonds and over thirty years of significant tolls. The city and Goldman Sachs will sign off on each stage of the project. FIGG will continue to study traffic and make geo-technical inquiries. The public meeting was entirely informational and after a break there was no reassembling of the audience. Small group assemblies continued to discuss the pros and cons. Another meeting will be called in several months.

The most visible opposition was the “Coalition for Responsible Development of Baldwin County.” Their prepared handout expressed concerns about the necessity and the costs of the bridge. A copy of Jamie Page’s article of September 2 from the Pensacola News Journal was attached to the coalition’s “Basic Questions.” The article described the inability of the Santa Rosa Bay Bridge Authority to repay bonds used to build the Garcon Point Bridge even with the continued raising of toll fares. No reference is made of this article within the body of the 13 “basic questions’’ although Financing and Revenue are two of the categories. Go to www.coalitionforsouthbaldwincounty.com for information.