St. Lawrence County and the town of Brasher are at odds over who is responsible for repairing Murray Road where water eroded an embankment around a culvert — or maybe it's a bridge.

The damage has forced the closure of the road since its discovery about a month ago, requiring residents of three homes to make a two-mile detour.

"It's going to be expensive," town Supervisor M. James Dawson said about the repairs. "We wouldn't be able to do it. This is the problem we're facing."

The dispute revolves around whether the county took over responsibility for the structure some 30 years ago.

If the structure has a span of 25 feet or more, then the county should have taken responsibility for it back around 1976 or 1977, when the county took over all town bridges of at least that length.

The state considers any such structure with a span of at least 25 feet a bridge, anything less is a culvert, Mr. Dawson said.

"We measured the bridge and thought it was 27 feet," he said. "They only mention the open span, so we're splitting hairs on how we measure bridges."

However, county Highway Superintendent William E. Dashnaw said that when the county took over responsibility for the town bridges, the span was measured at 23 feet, which left it Brasher's responsibility.

"I find no documentation after that where the county officially took over that bridge," he said.

Mr. Dawson suggested that the state may hold the key as to who owns the structure.

"The state has been inspecting it but they don't inspect bridges that aren't over 25 feet," Mr. Dawson said.

According to data on the state Department of Transportation Internet site, the only bridge it lists on Murray Road is marked as belonging to the town. That bridge, which crosses over Trout Brook, a tributary of the Deer River, is the only one the state shows the town still owns; the county owns eight others within the town and the state owns three, all over the St. Regis River: two on Route 11C and one on Route 37.

And a DOT spokesman was even more succinct.

"It's a bridge, it's 33 feet long and it's owned by the town," said the spokesman, Charles R. Carrier, adding that he was specifically talking about the Murray Road bridge over Trout Brook.

As a result, it's included among the New York bridges that the department inspects every two years, as are all spans of at least 20 feet, he said.

In August 2006, the Associated Press reported that the span was one of just seven in the state that remained open even though they were rated "poor" and had suffered "considerable deterioration."

Mr. Dashnaw said he has asked for a meeting with town officials to discuss the issue.

"In all my research, I've found nothing that shows it's a county bridge," he said.