State told Kinross a 1 percent weight cut would make their mining trucks OK on North Pole bridge

State engineers did indeed tell Kinross that a 1 percent cut in the weight of their mining trucks is all the company must do to meet the load limits on the Richardson Highway bridge in North Pole over the Chena River floodway.

One percent hardly seems to provide a sufficient margin of safety, seeing as how the trucks could well gain more than that amount on a winter’s day from ice picked up on the drive from Tetlin.

But a one percent cut is what the state gave tacit approval to and that’s what Kinross is aiming for.

Instead of a gross vehicle weight of 165,000 pounds, the trucks would have to top out at 163,350 pounds to meet the load limit, according to a presentation the state’s chief bridge engineer made July 26 to the advisory committee reviewing the mine trucking plan.

That translates into removing the equivalent of a pickup truck’s load of ore from each of the 95-foot mining trucks.

“We had our load rating engineer, he took 1 percent off of each of the weights on each of the axles and he said, ‘Yeah, you;re good to go now.’ To give Kinross an example of what would need to be done. Even better if they took 5 percent off, then you’d really be good,” said Leslie Daugherty, chief bridge engineer of the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.

Daugherty said the message was “if you reduce by 1 percent you’d be fine.” She said the easiest way for Kinross to avoid having to use a bypass route to get around that bridge is to “voluntarily” reduce their loads. “I can’t require them to do so,” she said.

Patrick Filbin of Kinross said at an Aug. 3 committee meeting that the real problem is not that the trucks are too heavy, but that the bridges at the Chena flood control project in North Pole and over Chena Hot Springs Road are substandard.

Kinross plans to use the bypass or roundabout at the Chena Hot Springs Road exit, but it intends to cut weights by 1 percent. It’s voluntary, he said, not mandatory.

“Our trucks are legal to cross them at the maximum gross weight. However, the bridges are not in suitable condition and the DOT has highlighted that in the presentation that Leslie gave to us last week. The one we were previously aware of already was the Chena Hot Springs undercrossing and we voluntarily agreed to bypass that bridge and go around it because there’s a substantial flaw, I guess you would say,” Filbin said.

“The rating of the capacity of that bridge is well under the approved standard that it should be at,” he said, referring to the Steese bridge over Chena Hot Springs Road.

Filbin said Kinross just found out about the weight problem crossing the Chena floodway on the Richardson Highway. He referred to the July 26 presentation by the state bridge engineer and said that as she pointed out “a 1 percent reduction in our gross, total gross vehicle weight would get us well within the capacities of that bridge without any changes.”

“As it stands we could cross those bridges today without any permits. DOT has the right or the ability to ‘load post’ those bridges. However, we’re trying to work out a solution so that it doesn’t impact all commercial traffic.”

He said if a posted load limit is placed on the bridges, it would affect not just Kinross but “every large motor vehicle that goes over those bridges.”

But it would not be “every large motor vehicle.” Just those that weigh 70-80 tons.

Barbara Schuhmann, a retired Fairbanks attorney who volunteers with Advocates for Safe Alaska Highways, said the issue was more complicated than that. She said there are a number of bridges that are not built to hold a super heavy load, “but that doesn’t mean they’re substandard.”

“It was never intended for them to withstand this weight,” she said.

As to when Kinross became aware of the weight issue on the bridge on the Richardson Highway, documents obtained by Advocates for Safe Alaska Highways from a public records request show that the state and Kinross were privately discussing bridge loads last fall in great detail.

The situation intensified after a document prepared by a state bridge expert last October said that the gross vehicle weight on the Richardson Highway bridge above the floodway should be a maximum of 72 tons.

The state now says that the bridge can handle about 10 tons more than that. The document from last October listed the Richardson bridge as one of five bridges that “would require a reduction in the proposed haul truck weight to remain below the posting/inventory/legal limit.”

The other four bridges requiring a reduction were the Steese bridge over Chena Hot Springs Road, the Richardson bridge over Badger Loop, the Johnson River bridge and the Sawmill Creek bridge. Now the state says that no reductions are needed for the Johnson River, Sawmill Creek and Badger Loop bridges.

I have asked the state for an explanation of the changes, which came about in a process that involved the state and Kinross, as well as engineers hired by Kinross, but not the public.

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