$14 MILLION EARMARKED FOR OLD ROAD BRIDGES.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

SANTA CLARITA - At the urging of U.S. Rep. Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, the House has authorized $14 million to widen The Old Road where it crosses two riverbeds in Valencia.

Approved in a companion appropriations measure, the money would be used to replace two bridges along The Old Road, crossing Castaic Creek and the Santa Clara River in Valencia.

The road is being widened from four to six lanes to accommodate continuing development in the area and to create a better alternate to the Golden State Freeway, said Connie Worden-Roberts, co-chairwoman of the Santa Clarita Transportation Alliance.

``We've gotten some significant money for the bridge repair,'' Worden-Roberts said Friday. ``The Old Road pinches down to just two lanes over the river and it has to be widened there if it's going to be a reasonably good access to the industrial parks and as an alternate route when the freeway construction starts.''

The Old Road will play a key role in moving north-south traffic through the valley next summer when work begins to replace a freeway bridge over Magic Mountain Parkway, she said.

That entire bridge will be replaced, half of it at a time, squeezing traffic onto one side of the freeway while work is done on the other. The Old Road, which runs parallel, is expected to be widened in time to pick up the excess traffic, Worden-Roberts said.

The authorization for the work on The Old Road was approved Thursday by the House of Representatives in its Water Resources Development Act, which has moved to the Senate. It calls for the Army Corps of Engineers to oversee reconstruction of The Old Road as it crosses two waterways.

McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, has obtained $7 million for each of the bridges. The old bridges are earthquake-damaged and flood-prone, the congressman said.

In other federal expenditures for Santa Clarita, McKeon secured $2 million to study the perchlorate contamination in the Santa Clara River Basin and $100,000 to study ways to eradicate nonnative arrundo donax, a bamboolike plant, from the river itself.

Those allocations were included in an appropriations bill due to be signed into law today by the president.

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The House has approved $14 million to widen this bridge north of Magic Mountain Parkway, in addition to a second span.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News