Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette Houghton County Vice Chair Tom Tikkanen, left, and Commissioner Glenn Anderson discuss the benefits of a second bridge across the Portage Canal during Tuesday’s meeting. The county board voted to send a letter to state legislators advocating the construction of another bridge.

HOUGHTON — Houghton County’s hazard mitigation plan calls an extended outage of the Portage Lake Lift Bridge “the single biggest infrastructure threat to the county.”

A summer of snarled traffic due to bridge repairs provided a fresh reminder of the disadvantages of only having one connection. With an influx of federal infrastructure funding, Houghton County board members are asking for a second bridge across the Portage Canal.

The board voted to send a letter to State Sen. Ed McBroom and State Rep. Greg Markkanen advocating another bridge at its meeting Tuesday.

An extended outage would leave the north part of the Keweenaw isolated, while those below the bridge would be cut off from the county’s two hospitals.

About 20,000 people live north of the bridge, said Vice Chair Tom Tikkanen, who added the item to Tuesday’s agenda. As the only Upper Peninsula county to grow in the 2020 census, that number — and the crossings — could grow.

“To some degree, this is pushed forward from the chaotic stalemates that we have encountered with the work on the bridge this year,” he said. “We’re fortunate on one hand that MDOT is maintaining that bridge. But on the other hand, this is a growing region.”

Commissioner Glenn Anderson recalled a conversation with the Michigan Department of transportation that there was only one island in the United States with a bigger population that had only one bridge for connection.

Michigan is slated to receive $10 billion from the recently passed federal infrastructure bill.

“There will be substantial funds available both for MDOT and local road commissions, and Act 51 cities and villages around the state of Michigan with that money, so it’s a good time to ask,” he said.

Anderson hoped the letters would encourage the lawmakers to apply pressure to the Michigan Department of Transportation to begin the process.

Markkanen, R-Hancock, said he’d support a second bridge, which he called long overdue. He said the biggest questions are funding and where a second bridge could be located. He suggested a citizens’ committee to study the issue.

“People just assume we have access to the northern part of the peninsula, and we just don’t … in an emergency situation things could get dicey,” he said. “The sooner we could identify a possible site or two or three, the better off we’d be, especially since this infrastructure funding is going to be out there.”

After the first bridge was built between Houghton and Hancock in 1875, a succession of bridges followed, eventually leading to the current lift bridge, built in 1959.

Discussion of a second bridge predates last summer’s construction. A heavy amount of contingency planning has gone on in the past 15 years, which picked up urgency after the bridge was stuck in the up position for four hours in 2010. A permanent committee has developed short-, medium- and long-term responses to an outage.

The previous edition of the county’s hazard mitigation plan also endorses a second bridge, calling it “the most critical hazard mitigation project for both Houghton and Keweenaw counties.”