Louisiana wants to give away Highway 90 bridges to be repurposed

PEARLINGTON, Ms. (WVUE) – Residents in a small Mississippi community believe their town is dying a slow death as a major artery connecting Louisiana and Mississippi remains closed for more than two years, and the state in charge of the closed road says it’s seeking potential takers for historic yet unnavigable bridges.

Highway 90, which serves as an eastbound exit from New Orleans to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, has been shuttered since May 2022 when inspections found four bridges to be structurally unsafe for drivers.

Pearlington, Mississippi sits on the edge of the state line, along the thoroughfare where cars used to pass from the other side of the water on a daily basis.

“Pearlington is a small town of about 1,000 families, and it is reducing every day,” said Michael Mavenyengwa, owner of the Pearlington Rocket Express.

His business used to function as a gas station and convenience store, but he said he hasn’t been able to afford to keep the pumps running.

“Due to that closure, we have experienced a major loss of business. We have lost maybe 50 to 75 percent of our business,” Mavenyengwa said. “The income we are having, the problems we are having, cannot sustain maintaining the pumps and paying all the bills we need to pay.”

“My business is dying.”

He said Pearlington has many older residents who would often take 90 to the hospital in Slidell.

When accidents on I-10 cause backups or closures of the highway, there is no other way to reach Louisiana or vice versa without traveling to Picayune, Mississippi.

“We feel like we are Americans like everybody else and pay taxes, and we are here trying to survive. It’s where we want to live,” Mavenyengwa said. “We need help here. Because 5 years, 10 years or 2028, maybe this town will be extinct.”

Louisiana is in charge of the bridges, and state and local leaders have often called for an expedited replacement.

But the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) said the replacement would cost over $300 million, and the state currently has a backlog of road repairs and infrastructure upgrades totaling more than $18 billion.

The state said it is seeking proposals for the removal of four bridges, all built in the 1930s: West Pearl River Bridge, West Middle Pearl River Bridge, Middle Pearl River Bridge, and East Middle Pearl River Bridge.

Each would cost approximately $520,000 to demolish, which the state will eventually have to do if an entity can’t be found to remove and repurpose the bridges.

“We need to get these bridges removed from our waterways,” said Daniel Gitlin with DOTD. “If they’re not going to be fixed, if they can’t be reconditioned, we cannot just leave them out there in the water, these are protected environmental waters.”

Gitlin said DOTD is currently in the environmental studies phase of the bridge replacement project.

Latest estimates put the replacement of the bridges sometime in 2028, but it’s unclear whether the state remains on that timeline still.

“This may be an opportunity for local governments, maybe St. Tammany, or some of the cities down there, to say, ‘Hey, we would like to relocate this to a public park,’” Gitlin said. “The state will not only give the bridges away, but they will pay for the cost of basically what it would take.”

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For Pearlington residents, a fix may be awhile away. Gitlin said patch repairs to the bridges, which are more than 90 years old, would only extend their lifespan by a year or two.

Marine traffic has to be considered in the replacement, and so the ideal scenario would be one long spanning bridge over the water, he said.

But it comes down to securing the funding to do so.

“When you’re talking about state funding and you’re talking about groups like the transportation committees in Baton Rouge, they’re going to be looking at the long-term effect of how we spend our money and what we can do for the community,” Gitlin said.

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