LANSING, Mich. -- The State Auditor General released an evaluation Friday on how well the Michigan Department of Transportation follows state and federal regulations on bridge inspections.

The Auditor General’s Office found five areas of concern.

The major problem: MDOT did not examine certain critical bridges or did not examine them as frequently as required by law.

That has major implications, and not just for safety because not following the letter of the law means Michigan could loss some federal funding.

“MDOT did not comply with critical safety provisions … and risked the withholding of federal aid,” cited audit the report.

Another concern: MDOT did not inspect the underside of some bridges with false decking.

Last month, Local 4 Defenders revealed that false decking is the plywood installed underneath bridges. False decking does not support the bridge in any way; its sole purpose is to catch crumbling concrete from the structure so it does not hit the cars below.

The Auditor General said MDOT did not correctly identify bridges with false decking in its reports and did not have procedures in place to do so.

For its part, MDOT has agreed to comply with the auditors’ recommendations.

To read the full inspection report click the link http://audgen.michigan.gov/

A representative for MDOT also released a statement to Local 4 Defenders Friday.

Response from MDOT Director of Communications Bill Shreck: Comments on Performance Audit of the Bridge Inspection Program November 2009

1. This is why we do audits, to help improve our processes and efficiency. We always welcome potential ways to provide better service to our customers

2. Safety is our first priority, and our record demonstrates that. When our inspectors find a problem that needs immediate attention, it gets it

3. Michigan, along with Washington State and Iowa, are the three states with the lowest fatality rate on their roads and bridges. Even during a funding crisis, safety comes first

4. Auditors are responsible for helping us improve our processes and identifying issues, it is the responsibility of bridge engineers to ensure safety and identify the proper engineering for our transportation system

5. We recognize we have an aging bridge system, as it continues to age we are going to encounter and address more and more maintenance and repair issues

6. While we want to do the best job possible in inspecting bridges, the bigger issue is with this and other infrastructure. We can identify the problems with our roads and bridge, sewers and water mains and other infrastructure, but without dependable revenue streams, governments at all levels will be less and less able to perform repairs and upgrade systems

7. At a time of decreasing funding and increasing costs, we have increased the number of qualified bridge inspectors and increased funding for inspections. We have more bridge inspectors than we had ten years ago

8. The audit is more about reporting issues than inspection issues, inspections are often done a few months before they are entered in the system.

9. The Federal Highway Administration, made up of civil engineers who oversee our work, agrees with our processes and has said repeatedly that we are substantially in compliance on bridge inspections

10. Most of the bridges in the report are on the local system, and are owned by those local agencies. State oversight can be tricky in these instances, especially with local transportation agencies that have faced reductions in staff and funding. There is often little these agencies can do other than close bridges, since they do not have the money for repairs

11. We are being taken to task in one area for not having a number of bridge scour inspections done before the deadline. In fact, MDOT has only 24 bridge scour inspections to complete on its system

12. We are dealing with small numbers here in many cases; MDOT oversees 10,642 bridges, 4,360 on the state system, that we have direct control of, and 6,282 local bridges that local authorities are responsible for

13. The vast majority of bridges, especially those that carry the most traffic, are not mentioned, because they are in compliance

14. The finding on false decking again discusses 105 out of 10,642, less than one percent of bridges on the system. The report recognizes that the most likely places for problems underneath a bridge deck are still visible with false decking

15. According to the audit report, we have gone beyond FHWA and AASHTO guidelines by developing a “Bottom of the Deck Rating System”

16. MDOT is also a leader, according to the report, in developing a mesh false decking system to better view the underside of bridge decks where false decking is in place

Local 4 Defenders will continue to monitor the state of our bridges and will keep you posted of any new developments.