Federal highway agency takes back $266,734 from Kings River Bridge inspection order

The Federal Highway Administration took back $266,734 in unspent money on Oct. 20 from a Juneau company's engineering and inspection order for the Glenn Highway's Kings River Bridge section east of Palmer.

The agency's Western Federal Lands division signed the order with PROHNS LLC on April 28, 2025, for $349,729. It covered construction project engineering and construction inspection services from Mile 66.0 to 67.2, with work running through Aug. 29, 2025. The Oct. 20 change closed out the order and left $82,995 obligated, all of it already paid, according to federal spending records. Those records can trail the action they record by weeks.

The underlying project replaces the Kings River Bridge and realigns the highway around it. State project information listed an anticipated May 2023 start and October 2024 completion. A 2023 state project list gives Western Federal Lands as the construction manager, estimates the construction contract at $18 million and warns drivers to expect traffic delays at times.

A July 2016 Western Federal Lands memo shows the new bridge shifted 50 feet upstream of the old one so traffic could keep using the old bridge during construction. That shift required about 2,000 feet of roadway realignment.

A separate state pavement preservation project covers the Glenn Highway from Mile 66 to 92, between Kings River and Cascade. It addresses worn pavement, drainage, guardrail and related work. At a May 20 update on upcoming state projects, Luke Bowland, the Alaska Department of Transportation's Central Region preconstruction engineer, listed the project's Stage 2, from Mile 75 to 83, among projects the department tentatively planned to advertise for bids in March.