U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who running for re-election and who received an endorsement from President Donald Trump, thanked Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy for “starting to push the grant funds out the door — at the direction of POTUS — to make the I-95 bridges replacement project over Lake Marion a reality.”
Graham added: “This is one of the most important projects in our state. It’s been a collaborative effort and will tremendously improve quality of life and commerce in the region.”
According to the DOT: “The I-95 over Lake Marion Bridge Replacement Project will replace four existing bridges that connect Clarendon and Orangeburg Counties in South Carolina and carry about 38,900 vehicles along the I-95 corridor daily. The bridges do not meet current design standards with narrow shoulders and roadway approaches and will be replaced with new infrastructure over Lake Marion. The new configuration calls for a single structure carrying three lanes of I-95 in each direction, with future capacity to expand to four lanes.”
I am very grateful to @SecDuffy and his team for starting to push the grant funds out the door – at the direction of @POTUS – to make the I-95 bridges replacement project over Lake Marion a reality.
This is one of the most important projects in our state. It’s been a… https://t.co/CDggAVmkl0
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) April 24, 2025
During the Biden administration, in July 2024, the Department of Transportation awarded the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) $175 million to replace the four I-95 bridges across Lake Marion as part of the federal Large Bridge Project awards (a total of $5 billion) through the Federal Highway Administration.
The DOT announced in July 2024 that work on the bridges was expected to start in Summer 2025. (Note: It was the fourth time the South Carolina DOT applied for a federal grant to cover the project.)
With funding from the Biden-Harris Administration’s infrastructure package, we’re replacing the I-95 bridge over Lake Marion in South Carolina to widen the shoulders, build travel lanes, and add cyclist and pedestrian lanes.https://t.co/oMR4EmhbIJ
— U.S. Department of Transportation (@USDOT) July 30, 2024
This week the Trump administration’s DOT claims that the Lake Marion Bridge grant is one of “more than 3,200 unobligated grants that had been promoted by the previous administration but never fulfilled. This unprecedented backlog of unobligated grants, along with irrelevant climate, DEI, and social justice requirements, delayed critical investments in communities across the country.”
You mean the money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure package signed into law by Biden? pic.twitter.com/dymdpvB703
— sockpuppet (@sockpuppet1979) April 24, 2025
Note: Two days after Trump returned to the White House in January, U.S. Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) wrote The Post and Courier op-ed titled ‘Joe Biden Delivered For South Carolina,’ which included a mention of the Lake Marion bridges project and “funding a decades-long wish list of major infrastructure needs around the state.”