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ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES FOR BRIDGE REPLACEMENTS
Throughout North Carolina
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Between 1994 and 2005, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) authorized Ko & Associates to conduct environmental planning and design studies for six groups (totaling 71 projects) of projects to replace deficient bridges throughout the state. For each project, Ko & Associates prepared functional and preliminary engineering designs and evaluated the environmental effects for multiple bridge replacement alternatives. We weighed the engineering design criteria, costs, and environmental effects, evaluating these in categorical exclusion documents for NCDOT and Federal Highway Administration Approval.
The bridges are located throughout the mountain, piedmont, and coastal plain regions of the state. From mountainous terrain across high quality trout streams to flat coastal plains across bottomland hardwood wetlands and swamps, each region has its unique community, environmental, engineering challenges. Ko & Associates worked with NCDOT to plan and design cost-effective solutions for the replacement structures and roadway approaches that avoided and minimized effects on the human and natural environment. Important engineering and environmental resources that constrained project alternatives included high quality wetlands and streams, water supply watersheds, vegetative buffers, historic properties, archaeological sites, US Forest Service Lands, university facilities, and other important community facilities.
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