RAISE Grant for Murray Bridge denied a second time
A photo taken from Murray Bridge on Monday, March 3, the bridge had been damaged, appearing to have been struck by a vehicle early Monday morning. Photo originally published in the March 6, 2025, issue of the Humboldt Independent, courtesy of Ben Loots.
By APRIL KELLEY
DAKOTA CITY - The Humboldt County Supervisors had a very short agenda before going into closed session on Monday, July 28.
Humboldt County Engineer Ben Loots informed the Supervisors that they were denied again for the RAISE grant for work on Murray Bridge.
“We cleared the first hurdle. We were determined as a project of merit so future applications we won't have to start at step one; we are on step three in the process. Future applications will be significantly cheaper,” Loots said.
According to Loots, 800 applications were submitted from across the United States and only 30 were selected.
“There was only one in the state of Iowa and that was in Cedar Rapids,” Loots said.
Loots said that the grant itself had been cut to only about 10% of the previous grant during this administration, which didn’t help the chances of being selected.
At this time, the County still has $2 million to use on the bridge so Loots said they are still moving forward with the design of the bridge and preparing to replace the bridge.
With all the rain, several roads have periodically had water over the road. Loots reminds drivers that if there is water over the road, do not risk driving through it.
Read more from the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting in this week's issue of the Humboldt Independent!
