After reexamining the condition of Rhode Island’s bridges, the state Department of Transportation has identified the need for “approximately $600 million in bridge repair and replacement projects’’ over the next five years, Governor Carcieri told a press conference today.

But the money may not be there. Rhode Island is in danger of losing $60 million to $70 million in federal transportation aid each year. The state’s 30-cent gasoline tax cannot make up the difference. And even if the state’s must-fix list is pared to high-priority projects, he said, the state faces a potential $210 million shortfall in available funding.

“Unfortunately, Rhode Island’s roads and bridges are aging and deteriorating,’’ Carcieri said in a statement. “In fact, the majority of our most heavily traveled roads and bridges were built between the 1950s and the 1970s.

"That means that we are facing a period where we must undergo major highway and bridge repair in Rhode Island. We have concerns about future reductions in federal highway spending.”

But, “as is the case in states throughout our nation, Rhode Island’s transportation needs far outweigh available resources,” Carcieri said. And, “with a projected deficit of the federal highway trust fund in 2009, there is a national concern that the federal government will reduce transportation funding to all states. We could see a 30 to 40 percent decrease in federal transportation funding. If that happens, Rhode Island could stand to lose $60 to 70 million in transportation funding each year.”

Calling the need to place weight limits on a Pawtucket segment of Route 95 a few months ago “the tip of the iceberg,’’ Carcieri said: “Unless we take measures now, many of the highway projects that we’ve committed to will be delayed.’’

He made the comments at a news conference at which he announced the creation of a 12-member panel to study the “future of transportation funding’’ over the next four to five years.

Neither Carcieri nor his out-going DOT director, Jerome Williams, voiced a preference for any one new funding strategy over another.

The governor cited steps other states have taken as possibilities here, among them: The sale of portions of Rhode Island’s roadways to private investors and what he called “user-fees’’ -- in other words, a toll.

But while saying “everything is on the table’’ – and he could not rule out new and higher tolls – Carcieri said he was not inclined to raise the state’s 30-cent gasoline tax.

Not until asked did Carcieri address the findings that led the Federal Highway Administration to dock the state $3.1 million in federal reimbursement for the concrete used on the DOT’s flagship project: the construction of a new section of Route 195 being built through the city of Providence, and another $679,399 of the cost of “metalizing’’ – or applying a coating of zinc as a preservative – to the steel on the new Providence River Bridge.

In a series of communications made public by the FHWA for the first time this week, the agency said at least 64 structures that support the ramps and bridges in the $610 million project contain concrete that was not tested for strength, in violation of various state and federal standards.

The FHWA did not challenge the safety of the work. In an Aug. 15, 2007, letter to DOT Director Williams, the federal agency said that DOT’s concrete sampling and testing "was found generally to be non-compliant" with the DOT’s own regulations between 2005 and early 2007.

Asked how this happened on his watch, and who he held to blame, Carcieri referred to an internal DOT review currently under way and said: “Let’s let the process play out. Let’s get the facts first."

“Certainly at this point we have no indication that there’s been any wrong-doing. People just weren’t doing their jobs,’’ he said.

“You know, my feeling – this is me speaking - in the time that I’ve been governor…is that sometimes because it’s federal money - somehow it's not real money.

"But I take it …and I know Jerry does, that it's all real money. It’s all coming from us as taxpayers. Do I think that maybe sometimes we’ve been a little looser than we should have been, maybe because we’re not as conscious or because the money is coming from Washington? Yes, maybe. That’s human nature sometimes.

“But people have a job to do….we’ll find out if there’s wrong-doing. It will be pursued. If it’s just laziness, not following the protocol they were supposed to follow but it’s cost us money, that’s another issue.’’

When asked, however, Carcieri said he saw no reason to reactivate the DOT audit he initiated and then halted last summer, or ask the state police – who found no criminal wrong-doing after a months-long inquiry into DOT operations last year – to take another look.

But Williams on Tuesday night confirmed that he had reassigned two top DOT engineers pending an internal investigation into the concrete testing lapses. They are James R. Caroselli, a $92,792-a-year chief civil engineer in charge of the Route 195 project, and Mark E. Felag, the $106,019-a-year managing engineer in charge of the DOT’s materials section, responsible for testing materials including concrete.

Caroselli has been shifted to the DOT maintenance division and Felag to its research section, Williams said.

Williams said the reassignments are temporary, but “we are doing a full review and ..when we are done with the review, there will be disciplinary action, appropriate disciplinary action.’’

Among those appointed to the governor’s new 12-member “Blue Ribbon Panel’’ on future transportation funding: Williams, who Carcieri has chosen after his year-long stretch at DOT, to head the Department of Administration; Lloyd Albert, AAA; Bob Cusak from the investment industry; John Gregory, Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce; Maureen Gughigian, First SW Securities;

DOT director-nominee Michael Lewis, the former head of Massachusetts’ Big Dig project; Peter Osborn, regional administrator, Federal Highway Administration; state Department of Revenue Director Gary Sasse; East Greenwich Town Manager Bill Sequino; Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council Director John Simmons; Keith Stokes, Newport Chamber of Commerce, and former Congressman Robert Weygand, vice president for administration at the University of Rhode Island.