Farms and pastures once dotted Hall County's landscape — that is until the 1950s, when the U.S. government began building Lake Lanier.

Water now hugs much of the West Hall and Gainesville shoreline and winds it way inland through creeks and streams.

With all those landscape changes have come bridges, and lots of them, especially scenic ones crossing the lake and ones connecting Hall and Forsyth counties.

Today, however, those bridges are starting to show their age.

Of 12 bridges over Lanier, four have a sufficiency rating below 40 on a 0-100 scale that measures structural integrity and other factors. And three rate between 40 and 60, according to The Times' study of a Georgia Department of Transportation bridges database.

At 50, a bridge is considered structurally deficient. At 40, it begins to work its way into replacement plans.

"It is like when you buy a new house: Everything works well, but after about 15 years, everything starts breaking or needs replacing at the same time," said Teri Pope, spokeswoman for the DOT's Gainesville-based District 1. "We are at a critical point."

The DOT "must replace these aging structures as needed, and our funding is at an all-time low," she added.

One of the bridges in dire shape is the narrow, two-lane Boling Bridge on Ga. 53/Dawsonville Highway at the Chestatee River portion of Lanier on the Hall-Forsyth border.

In a $13.5 million project expected to take two years, the DOT is planning to replace the current steel truss bridge, built in 1956, with a two-lane concrete bridge.

Engineers met with the public last week about the project, which may reach construction in state fiscal year 2014, or beginning July 1, 2013. Once the new bridge is built and the roadway on either side is tied into it, the old bridge will be demolished.

Elsewhere, work is planned next year to repair the driving surface on the westbound bridge on Ga. 53/Dawsonville Highway over the Chattahoochee River portion of Lanier and Browns Bridge on Ga. 369/Browns Bridge Road at the Hall-Forsyth county line.

Initially, DOT officials were looking at closing the bridges entirely for a couple of weeks and putting detours in place, but they have determined "that would have too much of an impact," Pope said.

"We're now looking at overnight-only work, which will make the work take longer but have less of an impact," she said.

The DOT is taking steps to get environmental approval for the work.

"The process of removing the existing driving surface, or epoxy coating, (involves) blasting it off (the bridge), so there is a lot of planning involved in catching the debris so that it doesn't go into the lake," Pope said.

Also, Browns Bridge is the potential home to the migratory osprey and the barn swallow, a threatened and endangered bird.

"We can't work during their nesting season," Pope said.

Gainesville's Ga. 53 westbound bridge, built in 1956, has been pegged for replacement in fiscal 2019. It carried traffic in both directions until a new eastbound bridge was built in 1992.

Browns Bridge — one of the oldest on Lanier, built in 1955 and rebuilt in 1999 — has been pegged for replacement in fiscal 2016.

The soonest replacement project had been planned for the bridge on Clarks Bridge Road at the Chattahoochee River, at Clarks Bridge Park and the site of the 1996 Olympic venue owned by Gainesville and Hall County.

The $7.1 million effort, which includes a pedestrian tunnel under Clarks Bridge Road, was to begin soon after right-of-way negotiations.

But the project is now on hold as the state Department of Natural Resources, one of the property owners, reviews and possibly changes its policies for land it owns.

"We have to get property from them as part of our right-of-way acquisition," Pope said.

Two other Ga. 369 projects scheduled for construction in fiscal 2017 are replacement of bridges at Six Mile Creek and Two Mile Creek in Forsyth County.

Both "are part of the proposed (Ga. 369) widening to a four-lane divided highway, so ... new parallel bridges would be built to carry the new two lanes of traffic," Pope said.

At Tuesday's hearing concerning Boling Bridge, many residents told the DOT they believe the structure should have four lanes.

"Neither Hall nor Forsyth has added (widening Ga. 53 to the bridge) to their plans yet," said Pope, who urged residents to speak to county government officials.

One Forsyth County resident, Andy Hall, said he doesn't favor replacing the bridge at all, given the nation's economic conditions.

"We don't have the money to do this project or many other projects," he said.

Hall also noted that the state spent $586,000 last year to repair the bridge's overhead green beams to help extend the bridge's life.

"We're putting new tires on a car we're going to send to the junkyard," he said.

Hall said he believes Browns Bridge deserves at least as hard a look when it comes to replacement.

"It was built at the same time as (Boling Bridge) was built and has the same design, so it has the state of (being) obsolete," he said.

Pope said the DOT inspects every bridge every two years "and more often if needed based on the condition of the bridge," then makes decisions on sufficiency ratings.

"Bridge replacement and overall maintenance of our existing transportation network are our highest priority, but that leaves us sorely lagging behind in providing more capacity," she said.

The DOT has been cash-strapped for years and says it just can't meet every bridge and road need.

Pope said Georgia ranks 49th nationally in per capita spending on transportation network despite being one of the nation's fastest-growing states.

Money comes from state and federal gas taxes, "but our revenue source will continue to shrink as our vehicles continue to get more fuel-efficient and we use more fuel alternatives.

"Even as the economy recovers, transportation funding likely will not return to previous levels."

Georgia has 14,649 bridges statewide and 941 of them, or 6.4 percent, are considered structurally deficient. Nine states have lower percentages, said David Spear, DOT press secretary.

"We believe the state's bridges, all in all, are in reasonably good condition," he said. "Still, we have a backlog of nearly 7,000 routine bridge maintenance items statewide and would need to spend $500 million in 10 years to address all of them — funds we simply do not have.

"So we prioritize the work and do the best we can to manage the workload."