A bridge on the Raccoon River Valley Trail in Greene County has been out since March and is expected to continue to be out of commission until sometime next year.

Greene County Conservation Director Dan Towers says about 70-feet of the 600-foot bridge that is two miles south of Jefferson on the trail collapsed this past March from ice jams and they have had barricades and signage put on since to keep trail users away from the closure.

“It’s not over the water, it’s actually the sandbar and part of the bank. So at least we don’t have to divert the course of the river to do the repair work. It is on dry land.”

Towers points out he’s applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds for the estimated $400,000 project. He adds that FEMA will send crews out next week to survey the damage. However, he doesn’t anticipate making repairs anytime soon.

“Not only does the construction repair itself take time, but just to get to that point takes quite a little (bit) of time with any federal project. I’m really not foreseeing anything happening this year. Hopefully once we get into the winter and maybe by next season possibly. But it’s a guess at best to say when we would see that completed.”

Until then, Towers says there are two routes from Cooper to Jefferson that bicyclists can take to avoid the area on the trail. He suggests using the county paved roads from the Cooper to Squirrel Hollow Park main road and then follow that to Jefferson, which is about 13 miles. The other route is going west from Cooper to Highway 4 and following that into Jefferson, which is 8 miles.