A groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday for a new, $13.3 million North Kahana Stream Bridge.

The 90-year-old bridge joins a long list of bridges that the state plans to replace over the next six years to bring aging structures up to new federal standards, said Tammy Mori, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation.

"We just started the South Punaluu Bridge and in the past three years we finished three other bridges in the area," Mori said. "In the next six years we have plans to start construction on 11 other bridges in the area."

The groundbreaking ceremony was hosted by the Friends of Kahana with a Hawaiian blessing and food, said Ben Shafer, president of the Friends of Kahana.

The North Kahana Bridge was built in 1927 and was not designed to carry the 10,000 vehicles that travel over it each day, Mori said.

"All that tonnage that goes over it every single day, it takes a lot of stress," Shafer said. "We don't want it to be like the one in San Francisco," he added, referring to the damaged San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge that disupted traffic last month.

The North Kahana project, which is 80 percent federally funded, is expected be completed by the end of 2011. Kaikor Construction is the contractor.

The new bridge will be wider and have pilings spaced farther apart to reduce the chance of debris clogging the stream and causing flooding, Mori said. The shoulders will be wider, a benefit for bicyclists and pedestrians, she said.

Although the state is building the new South Punaluu Bridge at the same time as the Kahana project, Mori said traffic flow should not be affected because both projects will have bypass roads.

"It will be a construction zone but it shouldn't have a big impact at all," she said.