Add the New Mississippi River Bridge to the list of elements in the region affected by the most recent round of flooding.
On their Facebook page today, those behind the project (a collaboration of the Missouri and Illinois Departments Of Transportation) stated that the current river levels "continue to slow down the plans for the bridge connecting in the middle. Right now, it looks like it may happen sometime in July."
Here's a panoramic photo of the bridge as it looked on May 30, 2013:
It's not the first time the project has been impacted by river levels. As we reported in June 2012, the opposite problem, too little water, was causing issues:
"Believe it or not, it's a problem that the river is a little bit too low," Greg Horn with the Missouri Department of Transportation, said. "The cranes aren't quite tall enough to each all the way to the top. 108-degree heat is kind of a little hard to work in, too."
Horn also said then that another flood in 2010 wiped out three months of work.
The bridge project, including some of the highway shuffling and construction to go along with it, has an expected price tag of $667 million. Despite the setbacks, traffic is expected to begin crossing the bridge in early 2014, perhaps by late February or early March, according to the project's Facebook response to our question today.
Now, what the bridge will be named once it's completed? That's another story altogether.
Follow Kelsey Proud on Twitter: @KelseyProud
