Harcon Inc., of Spokane, has begun working on a $2.8 million bridge replacement project for Stevens County.

The Spokane contractor recently started the project, which entails replacing the 1940s steel Barstow Bridge with a single-span concrete girder bridge, says Jim Whitbread, the county's director of public works.

The bridge is just east of Barstow, Wash., about 14 miles north of Kettle Falls, and just east of U.S. 395.

The old one-lane, 200-foot long structure links Ferry and Stevens Counties and carries traffic on Barstow Bridge Road over the Kettle River, Whitbread says. Because of its construction, it is considered a fracture-critical structure, meaning that if one section of the steel bridge fails, the bridge could collapse.

"We felt it was very important to get that bridge out of our inventory," Whitbread says.

The county is paying for the new two-lane bridge with a Federal Highway Administration grant that will pay 100 percent of the cost, he says.

The project was designed by the Spokane office of Denver-based CH2M Hill Inc., he says.

In the project, the contractor will bring three preconstructed segments of the bridge to the job site and connect them there, pouring concrete in the gaps to create a single span and post-tensioning the structure with steel strands.

Whitbread says the contractor hopes to be finished with the project in November, but has until spring to complete the work if needed. In the interim, the old bridge is closed and traffic is being rerouted about 7 miles to another river crossing. The Barstow Bridge is the last of a number of aging bridges to be replaced in the county in an ongoing effort, Whitbread says.