Pasco won’t foot the bill for repairs on new $40M Lewis Street Overpass
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- Overnight crews are repairing cracked concrete and replacing joints on the Lewis Street Overpass.
- City officials say there are no structural issues or public safety concerns.
- Cascade Bridge bears full costs for repairs under existing city contract.
Barely one year since cars first traveled over the Lewis Street Overpass, cracks have started to show.
Pasco Public Works Director Maria Serra said that expansion joints on either side of the bridge were faulty and created cracks in concrete sidewalk panels on the east and west sides of the bridge.
But there are no structural problems with the bridge and no public safety concerns. Serra described the cracks as a maintenance and cosmetic issue.
Repairs are already underway.
Construction plan and schedule
Expansion joints allow the bridge to expand and contract with year-round temperature changes. The joints connect where the ground-level dirt embankment and concrete structure of the bridge meet.
Some time last year, cracks started to appear near the joints. Onsite inspectors have been monitoring them.
Crews are putting in overnight construction shifts through the end of August to demolish and rebuild concrete sidewalk panels, remove small sections of pavement and replace the existing joints.
There may be traffic delays from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. through Aug. 29.
Traffic will be reduced to a single lane at both ends of the bridge during construction. Parts of the sidewalks over the bridge are closed on both the north and south sides.
The city has an existing contract with Vancouver, Wash.-based company Cascade Bridge. It’s the company’s responsibility to address the problems and pay for repairs and replacement costs.
“If [the city] accepts the project from the contractor without addressing these concerns, then the city is responsible for maintaining something that wasn’t quite functioning,” Serra said.
“What we are doing is ensuring that we are receiving the product we contracted for and ensuring our contractor is delivering this bridge in a way that would not become a burden to the city and its taxpayers in the future. It’s important for long-term maintenance costs to be low.”
Why hasn’t the underpass been demolished?
The 625-foot bridge opened in April to replace a deteriorating Lewis Street Underpass.
But the historic underpass still has not been demolished.
The top six feet of the underpass need to be removed based on requirements set by BNSF Railway.
Serra said that the city has not received funding for the project at this point. She described work on the underpass as a separate companion project.
Pasco is seeking funding for the demolition through grants, loans and requests to the state legislature and Congress.
The total cost of the overpass project was $40.6 million, Pasco city staff previously wrote in a statement. There were 52 change orders totaling $6.5 million.
This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 4:29 PM.
