BATON ROUGE - The Department of Public Works is used to making repairs, not paying for them. In 2022, a city employee struck the Airline Highway overpass at Florida Boulevard and now the state is asking for their money back.

"Whatever expenses are going to be necessary to remedy the situation, the City-Parish will be responsible for those dollars," East Baton Rouge Director of Transportation Fred Raiford said. 

The City-Parish admitted that the employee failed to properly secure a piece of equipment that ended up hitting the bridge.

"The driver of the truck indicated that he did not know for sure that the boom was tied down. Well, he should've checked that. Certainly there is no question that we are responsible. We created the issue and it's our intentions to make DOTD whole again," Raiford said.

Those repairs took nearly a year to replace the girders built in the 1950s supply issues further complicated the timeline.

"We had to redesign that girder and all of the reinforcement from scratch, it's mainly because the design took awhile. It's also because getting the supplies like some of the concrete that you're going to need hasn't been the easiest to get for this project," DOTD spokesperson Rodney Mallet said.

Earlier this year, the state said it was seeking at least half a million dollars. Thursday, the Metro Council approved to settle the claim for $990,428.

A statement from the mayor's office reads: "A city-parish vehicle caused the damage to the roadway owned by DOTD. It was always agreed that DOTD would repair and city-parish would cover the cost."

The City-Parish employee responsible was required to take additional safety classes after the crash.