Editor’s note: This is part of a series of articles examining the status of the Bellaire Bridge, which formerly operated as a toll bridge spanning the Ohio River between Bellaire and Benwood. The bridge has been closed since 1991 with no viable plan in place for its removal.

BELLAIRE — After watching the Bellaire Bridge rust and deteriorate for 33 years since its closure, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say they are ready to take action to clear a pathway for boat and barge traffic on the Ohio River if it were to collapse.

The span, opened in 1922, served as a privately owned toll bridge between Benwood, West Virginia, and Bellaire, Ohio, for 69 years before it was closed in 1991.

It has since changed hands several times, and it remains standing despite several court orders for its demolition.

How long and costly the cleanup would be in the event of a collapse is “situational dependent,” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District Public Affairs Specialist Andrew Bryne said. Until the structure fails, neither organization will provide estimates regarding the financial and environmental impact of the event.

The first objective of the Coast Guard after a bridge collapses is to keep water traffic moving, according to Eighth Coast Guard District Commander Eric Washburn. To do this, a safety zone around the collapsed bridge is made, and the Coast Guard quickly broadcasts information regarding the collapse.

After a safety zone has been established, a possible next step for cleanup would be Coast Guard members sending divers to the collapse site to cut up pieces of the bridge to be removed. The cleanup would probably consist of “a lot of underwater cutting” of sections of the bridge by Coast Guard members, according to Washburn.

The Coast Guard would remove pieces of the structure from the water until a navigational path is cleared in the river. This navigation channel must be a minimum of “9 feet deep and 300 feet across,” Bryne noted.

Washburn said the next step the Coast Guard might take would be to hire a commercial crane to lift cut-up sections of the bridge out of the water.

Even though their priorities are “slightly different” from those of the Coast Guard, Bryne acknowledged the U.S. Army Corps would coordinate with the Coast Guard to clean up the span if it fell. The main goal for the Corps of Engineers after a bridge collapses is to open up the channel under the bridge for waterway travel.

“We are not necessarily concerned with completely cleaning up a waterway,” Bryne noted. “We would want our main priority to be opening up the channel navigation, and the channel does not necessarily need to be completely clear of all debris to open it for navigation.”

The Army Corps cleanup process for bridges varies according to the situation, Bryne noted.

“I’m not able to say, “If there was exactly this much debris that needed to be moved out, the Army Corps could then do this,” Bryne said. “We just can’t give those same details.”

The first step the Corps of Engineers takes to open up a navigation channel is contacting the structure’s owner. If a bridge is under private ownership, Bryne said the Army Corps tries to track down the owner to “reduce the cost of removal.”

Finding an owner to foot the bill for cleanup is markedly difficult for the Bellaire Bridge, privately owned by Lee Chaklos. The owner has not been involved with the bridge since 2013 when he served a 30-day jail sentence on the charge of criminal corruption for lying about bridge investors. Chaklos declined to comment on his current ownership status of the bridge, butu Marshall County Assessor Eric Buzzard confirmed the deed for the bridge lists its ownership under KDC Investments, which is owned by Chaklos.

An inability to contact the owner to complete the first step of clearing the waterway would not “immediately stop the cleanup,” Bryne noted. In the case of a bridge being under an absent owner, he said the Army Corps will take alternate steps to open the channel “as expeditiously as possible.”

“We’re not going to wait around for the owner to get back to us,” he emphasized. “We’re going to make sure that we do our best to have the channel open. That’s the priority.”

These alternate steps include contacting a salvage contractor or using a medium repair fleet to begin cleanup.

The Coast Guard’s cleanup steps also include contacting the bridge owner to find out what resources they have to remove the debris. In the same vein as the Army Corps, Washburn said the Coast Guard will still take action to clean up the span if they cannot track down the owner.

“If the bridge collapsed and navigation was blocked, it doesn’t mean that we would just throw our hands in the air and say, ‘We’re not responsible until we get a response from this person,'” Bryne added. “We would carefully send out a salvage contractor, and we would get that navigation channel open as quickly as possible.”

Bryne noted that “funding would be on their mind” throughout the operation, but a lack of response from the owner regarding payment would not halt their involvement in the cleanup. After the navigation channel is reopened, the Army Corps would return to “focusing on the funding.”

For both bodies, the cleanup of the bridge and river would aim to clear a path for boat travel again through the river. Bryne stressed that while the Army Corps would help with the cleanup to reach this goal, it is “not responsible for the bridge.”

“Just because we are trying to reopen the navigation channel does not mean we would handle the entire gate cleanup,” he said. “We do whatever it takes to get that navigation channel open, which also depends on what happened to the bridge during the collapse.”

If a bridge owner can never be located, Bryne said the next steps taken by the Army Corps for cleanup of the structure would remain “situational dependent.”

“We would have to evaluate the structure and cite the conditions and impact of debris on navigation before further cleanup,” he outlined. “We have to evaluate all actions for further cleanup based on the unique scenario of each collapse.”

David McLaughlin, director of Public Works and Development for Benwood, is “glad” that the Coast Guard and Army Corps would come in and clear a path in the waterway in the event of a collapse. However, he emphasized that cleaning up the river would only be a portion of the effort required in the event of the entire bridge collapsing.

The Bellaire Bridge consists of two portions: the metal bridge section suspended over the river and the land approach that leads up to the section above the water. With the bridge being partly on water and partly on land, McLaughlin drew attention to the fact that if one side fell, that does not “necessarily affect the other one.”

McLaughlin is “almost certain” that the federal or state government would intervene and assist in the cleanup if the land portion of the bridge that stretches over part of the city’s business district collapsed. If not, he said the city of Benwood does not have the funds to allocate toward an extensive cleanup operation.