The Department of Transportation brought groundbreaking technology and a project update to a March 22 meeting about the replacement of the swing bridge in South Bristol.
DOT project manager Steve Bodge said construction will likely start in the fall of 2013 and wrap up around the end of 2014.
“If absolutely necessary, we could swing into the spring of 2015,” Bodge said.
During a question and answer session following his presentation, Bodge said the department doesn’t expect to acquire any properties through eminent domain.
Last year, the department started negotiations to buy and remove a seasonal residence on Rutherford Island, igniting a negative reaction from some citizens and property owners.
The reaction prompted the department to consider other options.
“There is no acquisitions planned at this time,” Bodge said.
Construction had previously been slated to start in 2012. A complex set of federal regulations has contributed to the delay.
The state needs a permit from the U.S. Coast Guard. “I was personally unaware that that process takes nine to 12 months,” Bodge said.
“We have started discussions with the Coast Guard,” Bodge said. “They will be in town, I believe, in May.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service controls when contractors have access to The Gut. At present, the window for what Bodge called “in-stream work” lasts from November to April, plus a month in July.
The limitation is in place to protect certain fish species.
“We’re trying to set up a construction schedule that works with all these things at the same time,” Bodge said.
The department is considering a technique known as advanced bridge construction in order to complete construction as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
“We know the importance of building this bridge as fast as we can,” Bodge said. “We are looking at any technologies out there to make this a fast process.”
The department might be able to “build the entire deck of the bridge off-site and barge it in and put it in place,” Bodge said.
A question and answer session followed Bodge’s presentation.
Bodge, in response to a question from South Bristol Planning Board member John Harris, quelled a persistent rumor about funding problems. “There are no funding problems,” he said.
The most divisive exchange of the session occurred when Beth Fisher, a Rutherford Island resident and owner of Island Grocery, complained about the type of bridge the department plans to build.
The bascule, or lifting, bridge “is going to destroy the character of our town,” Fisher said.
South Bristol attracts artists who paint the village “because it’s beautiful and it’s atmospheric and it harks back to a simpler time,” Fisher said. She said this would no longer be the case if the department builds the bridge it intends to build.
South Bristol Selectman Ken Lincoln attempted to steer the exchange back to the logistics of permitting and construction.
“You’re about three years late for these comments,” Lincoln said. “We’re in the process of permitting a project, not designing a project.”
“We’re not going to go back to square one at this point,” Lincoln said.
Wayne Frankhauser, an assistant program manager with the DOT bridge program, agreed. “You folks have settled on a bridge type,” he said.
Fisher said the community of seasonal residents who own vacation homes on the island – what she called “the constituency that cares about the bridge the most” – didn’t have a say in the design process.
“I disagree that ‘we folks’ had a voice in this,” Fisher said. “I don’t think that we were justifiably represented.”
Lincoln asked for a show of hands among those in attendance of who attended the series of public meetings about the bridge design. Almost everyone in the room raised their hands.
Fisher dismissed the group, a large crowd that included all three selectmen, the fire chief, the harbormaster, the librarian and the chairmen of the planning board and the shellfish committee – as “non-representative” and “a winter constituency.”
Ken Maguire countered Fisher’s portrayal of the proposed design.
“There is a precedent for a bascule bridge across The Gut,” Maguire said. The bridge that preceded the swing bridge now in place was a lifting bridge, he said.
“I live on the island and I’m looking forward to a unique design,” Maguire said.
The department has said the bridge, a European/Dutch-style heel trunion bascule, will be the first of its kind in New England.
Maguire predicted that the new bridge would be “just as unique and just as liked and just as attractive and a hell of a lot more dependable” than the existing span.
Bodge said the department would try to make a rendering of what the bridge would look like in place in order to give residents a clearer idea of what to expect.
Bodge, in response to several questions about the placement of utilities – overhead or underwater – said the department does not decide that question.
Fielding a question about the design of the bridgetender’s building, department officials said they abandoned an unpopular “lighthouse” design and plan to complete another design soon.
The department broadcast the meeting on the Internet using Adobe Connect Web conferencing technology – the first use of the technology by DOT.
The department initially planned to enable people to ask questions and otherwise participate in the meeting via the technology.
“The department was using this technology for the first time and did not feel comfortable with the logistics of opening the phone lines to everyone at the same time,” Bodge wrote in a mass e-mail.
“We expect that one day in the future we’ll be able to be fully interactive with this,” Bodge said at the meeting.
At the peak, 25 people were watching online and another 25 were listening in by telephone, essentially tripling the South Bristol audience, Bodge wrote in the e-mail.
“Volume issues” hampered the broadcast, he wrote. “We have learned a lot from this experience and hope to build on it in the future.”
The department plans to hold two more public meetings in the near future – the first in May or June and the second in July or August.
State Sen. Chris Johnson attended the meeting.
