By James Leggate for the Engineering News-Record

Federal funding accounting for nearly one quarter of the North Carolina Dept. of Transportation’s upcoming $1.1-billion Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement is paused along with other federal transportation discretionary grants, state officials say.

The project was awarded a $242-million grant by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration last year, but funding is currently paused as part of a review of grants directed by President Donald Trump in an executive order Feb. 26, NCDOT representative Andrew Barksdale told ENR via email.

The project is still in design, and NCDOT has not yet selected a preferred alternative for the replacement bridge, which would carry the highways U.S. 17, U.S. 76 and U.S. 421 across the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, N.C. State officials anticipate getting a minimum clearance for the bridge in the spring or summer from the U.S. Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers, and NCDOT will continue to pursue completion of necessary environmental documents, Barksdale said. Officials are on track to finish those documents in 2026.

If funding is ultimately revoked, NCDOT “is undetermined” as to whether it can still proceed with the project, according to Barksdale.

Court Orders End to Freeze

While that funding remains in limbo, a district court judge in Rhode Island ordered March 6 for federal agencies to stop withholding money already appropriated by Congress. North Carolina joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia in filing the federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in January, following a White House Office of Management and Budget memo that directed a widespread federal spending freeze. That memo has since been rescinded, but the status of the funds remains unclear. Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered a temporary injunction in favor of the states, extending a block of the funding freeze to those states.

Trump’s executive branch “put itself above Congress,” McConnell wrote. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’ authority to control spending.”

The judge had already issued a temporary restraining order, but issued the injunction after state attorneys general sought to stop the Trump administration from freezing additional funds. The injunction bars a slate of federal agencies from “pausing, freezing, blocking, canceling, suspending, terminating or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to the states under awarded grants, executed contracts or other executed financial obligations.”

NCDOT declined to comment on the active litigation and whether it impacts the status of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement funding.

The grant for the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge was announced last summer along with 12 other bridge project grants totaling $5 billion from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

The Tennessee Dept. of Transportation was another of the awardees, set to receive $394 million for its America’s River Crossing project replacing a bridge carrying Interstate 55 across the Mississippi River between Memphis, Tenn., and West Memphis, Ark. Tennessee is not part of the federal lawsuit in Rhode Island. Nichole Lawrence, a communications officer with the Tennessee Dept. of Transportation, said in an email that TDOT is confident that the federal funding “is not in jeopardy” and that officials are proceeding as planned to deliver the project. 

Other grant recipients contacted by ENR did not immediately answer questions about the status of their funding.

The preceding article originally appeared on March 6, 2025 at the Engineering News-Record’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Any views or opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Carolina Leadership Coalition. Photo above of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge by Ned Leary Photography.