ArDOT awards $17 million contract to raise Highway 71 above Red River floodwaters north of Texarkana
The Arkansas Department of Transportation has awarded a $17.1 million contract to raise U.S. Highway 71 by as much as 8 feet along the stretch north of the Red River bridge that floodwaters closed twice in 2015.
McGeorge Contracting Co. of Pine Bluff submitted the low bid of $17,063,675 when ArDOT opened bids Aug. 12. The department awarded the contract two days later, subject to Federal Highway Administration concurrence. McGeorge bid 440 days to finish the work.
The project, ArDOT Job 030531, covers 1.47 miles of the four-lane highway between the Red River and Ogden in Little River County. Its purpose, according to ArDOT’s environmental review, is “to raise the roadway grade of Highway 71 above the headwater elevation.”
ArDOT has not announced a construction start date or a traffic-control plan for the work.
The road that went under in 2015
Highway 71 is the main route between Texarkana and Ashdown, and the low ground just north of the Red River bridge, around the Highway Police weigh station, is where the highway floods.
The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department closed all four lanes on May 29, 2015, when the river at Index reached about 26.5 feet. The river crested at 31.41 feet on June 4, and the highway stayed closed for two weeks. The closure ran 2.47 miles, from the Arkansas Welcome Center to the Highway 380 intersection at Ogden, and sent traffic through Foreman on Highway 41 or through Fulton on Interstate 30.
Rain from Tropical Storm Bill pushed the river back up three weeks later. On June 26, 2015, about 6 inches of water covered the highway at the weigh station and the road closed in both directions again. It reopened July 1.
The flood also tore up the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission boat ramp and access road at the Index bridge. Those repairs waited on FEMA money and the ramp did not reopen until January 2018.
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit issued in June describes the project as “raising the existing grade of U.S. Highway 71 to prevent future flooding of the roadway.”
What will change
The highway will be rebuilt on its existing alignment with four 12-foot lanes, 10-foot paved outside shoulders and 6-foot inside shoulders. The weigh station in the median stays, with new entrance and exit roads built to meet the higher roadway.
A taller embankment needs a wider footprint. ArDOT’s right of way through the section grows from 290 feet to an average of 335 feet, which required the department to buy about 7.3 acres from adjoining landowners. The review found no homes or businesses would be displaced.
The contract calls for earthwork, aggregate base and asphalt paving, cold milling, concrete ditch paving, guardrail, rumble strips and new pavement markings.
The section carried about 13,000 vehicles a day in 2023, 12 percent of them trucks, and ArDOT projects 15,000 a day by 2043.
The entire project sits in a FEMA special flood hazard area. ArDOT determined that raising the road should not put adjoining property at greater flood risk than it faces today. The work will fill about a third of an acre of wetlands, which the department is offsetting with credits from its Sulphur River mitigation area south of Fouke. An archaeological survey of the right of way, with 169 shovel tests, found nothing of historic significance.
The Federal Highway Administration cleared the project environmentally in September 2021. The Corps of Engineers issued its wetlands permit June 4, 2026.
Texarkana’s water main had to move first
The wider right of way landed on top of a Texarkana Water Utilities transmission main that runs along the highway.
In a Dec. 1, 2023, letter to TWU Executive Director Gary Smith, engineer C. Glen Spears of Spears Engineering Company wrote that ArDOT’s plan to raise the highway “required them to acquire additional right-of-way,” and that the utility needed to install about 6,500 feet of new 42-inch ductile iron main between the Red River bridge and Ogden to get its line out of the way.
Five contractors bid on the waterline job on Nov. 30, 2023. KAJACS Contractors Inc. of Little Rock was low at $4,249,500, under the engineer’s estimate of $4,812,620, and Spears recommended TWU award it the contract. ArDOT agreed to pay the full cost of the relocation, according to the letter.
The other bids
Six contractors bid on the grade raise. After McGeorge, the bids were Grant Garrett Excavating of Bentonville at $21.4 million, Capital Paving and Construction of Jefferson City, Missouri, at $21.5 million, Redstone Construction Group of Little Rock at $22.9 million, Robinson Construction of Poteau, Oklahoma, at $26 million, and WL Bass Construction of Monroe, Louisiana, at $33.6 million. Cleve Batte Construction of Fouke picked up the plans but did not bid.
In the same letting, ArDOT awarded Emery Sapp and Sons of Columbia, Missouri, a $1.3 million contract for pavement repairs on Interstate 30 at the Texarkana visitor center.