EAST CHICAGO, Ind. (AP) - State highway officials are considering whether to tear down a 1 1/4-mile bridge on a northwestern Indiana expressway rather than make extensive repairs after shutting it down nearly a month ago.

Some local officials also are questioning why problems with the bridge weren't discovered sooner.

The Indiana Department of Transportation closed a 4-mile section of Indiana 912, known locally as Cline Avenue, after inspectors found significant corrosion where the 70-foot-tall concrete and steel piers meet the bridge deck over the Indiana Harbor Canal in East Chicago.

The highway runs near the ArcelorMittal steel mill and is a route to the Ameristar Casino on Lake Michigan.

A consulting company has given the highway agency numerous multimillion-dollar options for repairing or replacing the bridge, which opened in 1986, state bridge inspection engineer William Dittrich said.

"Anywhere we go, we're talking a large sum of money," Dittrich said. "Do we want to spend a large amount of money and have a 20-year-old bridge that's been fixed or the same amount of money on a brand new?"

A state highway improvement plan released last month included $90.6 million to essentially replace the entire span.

State officials were urged to place an 18-ton weight limit on the bridge in a Nov. 6 letter from URS Corp., which inspected the span in October.

The bridge faced possible "structural failure" without such steps, according to the letter, which was released Wednesday after public records requests by the Post-Tribune of Merrillville and The Times of Munster.

The state highway department closed the highway Nov. 13 in a decision based on "several inspections, reports and data collected over the past several years," spokeswoman Angie Fegaras said.

State Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, said she wonders how problems of the magnitude outlined in the report weren't found in previous inspections.

"This is not like we just looked at this today," Tallian said. "So I'm wondering has this been building up or was it just discovered?"

Posted 12/10/2009