The house overwhelmingly passed legislation that would provide an additional one billion dollars to improve the safety of the nation's bridges.

There are tens of thousands of structurally deficient bridges across the country.

One bridge in eastern Kentucky that has a hole in it will be repaired next week.

The Department of Transportation in District 12 monitors more then 600 bridges in 7 different counties, one of them in the Kite area of Knott County has a unique problem there is a hole that spans 1 to 2 feet in diameter in the middle of the bridge.

“We have been watching this bridge for sometime because as I said the deck has been wearing down at a rate that was faster then probably normal,” Sara George said.

Officials say they will remove the metal steel plate that covers the hole and patch up the bridge those repairs will begin Monday.

George says it is pretty uncommon to see a hole in the middle of a bridge especially a bridge as sturdy as this one.

High volume of traffic is why repairs are needed.

“On most of our rural secondary roads the traffic count comes from primarily from commercial vehicles and in our case that means mostly coal trucks,” George said.

Officials say they will put up portable message boards on Friday and leave them up through the weekend so drivers have time to find an alternative route.

George says people can expect the bridge to re-open by Wednesday night.

Officials started taking a closer look at bridges everywhere after the deadly collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis, nearly one year ago.