The bridge on Smith Road in Winfield Township, which is currently closed to all traffic due to damage caused by a flood earlier this month, as seen on Thursday, Aug. 27. William Pitts/Butler Eagle

WINFIELD TWP — A tiny bridge on Smith Road is becoming a big headache for the township and its residents. The bridge has been closed to all traffic since 10 as a result of damage caused by flooding from a severe storm that overloaded Rough Run.

According to township Supervisor Matthew Klabnik, a replacement bridge is already on the drawing board. However, the township is still seeking funding to get it built — specifically by teaming up with Butler County to apply for a grant through the PennDOT Multimodal Transportation Fund.

Previous attempts by Winfield Township to apply for grant funding for the project have been unsuccessful.

“We have a shovel-ready project,” Klabnik said. “We’ve done the permitting. We’ve done the detailed design. We know everything about how that bridge is going to be built. We just don’t know how we’re paying for it. If we knew how we were going to pay for that bridge, we would be putting it out to contract.”

In the short term, the township is waiting on the go-ahead from engineering firm LSSE to reopen the bridge. According to Klabnik, the engineer will check if any water penetrated the stones that hold up the bridge.

Once the bridge does reopen, it will remain a one-lane bridge with a weight limit of 3 tons.

The one-lane restriction stems from a 2024 incident in which a driver crashed into the bridge’s guardrail.

So many residents were concerned about the state of the Smith Road bridge that the usual work session held before the monthly board of supervisors meeting on Thursday night, Aug. 27, was moved into the conference room, rather than the side room where it is usually held.

While the township has plans for what to do about the bridge in the future, Gail Mercatell is living next to the bridge right now. At Thursday night’s meeting, she told supervisors the recent flood caused damage to her property on Smith Road, which is the closest one to the bridge on its southwest side. Mercatell said her front yard and a driveway ended up littered with large rocks, which were placed there by township engineers to attempt to mitigate flooding.

“There are rocks so big that the only way I’m getting it out of there is with a skid loader or a backhoe,” Mercatell said.