Amesville bridge reopens to traffic

AMESVILLE/FALLS VILLAGE — Thanks to a cooperative effort between the towns of Falls Village and Salisbury, as well as the efficiency and cooperation of the towns’ road crews and contractors working with a state-recommended professional bridge contractor, the single-lane bridge over the Housatonic River between Amesville and Falls Village has been repaired and reopened.

It was abruptly closed in late June when a Connecticut state bridge inspector found signs of structural deterioration in need of immediate repair.

The fear was that the bridge would suddenly absorb heavy truck traffic, when the nearby Route 7 bridge (near Housatonic Valley Regional High School) was reduced to one lane for its own repair work. The upgrades to the small historic bridge, which links the two towns and spans the Great Falls have made it safe for, in particular, emergency vehicles to travel across.

“This is good news,� said Falls Village First Selectman Patricia Mechare on Tuesday, when the bridge reopened. “It’s been quite a worry for the emergency services, a double problem for Lakeville as well. The Falls Village Fire Department covers Amesville� and needs to get over there quickly in emergencies.

The Amesville section of Salisbury runs along the shore of the Housatonic River and is separated from the center of Salisbury (and its firehouse and ambulance garage) by hills and winding roads.

Also, there are emergency medical technician volunteers who live in Amesville but volunteer for Falls  Village. The shutdown had added about 10 minutes of travel to their response times as they were forced to go around the closed bridge.  

Roads also improved

In addition to reinforcement of the steel structure, the towns made repairs to the roads leading up to the span.

“There was some significant work to be done, and the town crews did it together, where the road meets the bridge on the Salisbury side,� said Mechare.

Because Salisbury has the greater grand list of taxable property, she said, Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand took the lead in coordinating the necessary repairs.  Rand has also taken the lead on several complicated bridge repairs for his town over the years, including one on Salmon Kill Road, which looked like a quick easy job and turned out to be lengthy and expensive, thanks to huge boulders hidden beneath the riverbed.

Reached for comment while on vacation, Rand said there are really two parts to the repairs that were done: one quite technical and done by steel workers, and one involving a simpler but quite extensive repair accomplished by the town crews. “We had a good engineer and worked it out nicely with the state Department of Transportation [DOT]. Both crews did an impressive job. The next big chapter will be the longer-term restoration,� he said.

The work done by the Salisbury town highway crew, in cooperation with the Falls Village town crew, “which they did an excellent job on,� Rand said, included new decking and new beams, with new asphalt pavement on top where the bridge meets the road. He said this part of the repair is a five-to-10-year fix.

For the more technical work, the town of Salisbury hired WMC Engineers of Newington, who did the load analysis and then the design approved by the state.

“The load analysis had to be done before anything could be approved, the DOT required it,� Rand said. “It was a complex repair on the arches.�

100-year fix

This part of the repair is a 100-year fix, he said. The more technical replacement of steel gussets was done by professional bridge contractors recommended by the state. Rand believes the weight limit on the bridge is now 20 tons. The emergency vehicles for the town towns top out at a little over 15 tons.

Rand said the repair cost came to $19,000, and the cost of the load analysis is $10,000. Falls Village has said they would share some of the cost, but no firm arrangements have yet been made.

“We have a bridge account in Salisbury that we put money into every year,� he said. “Though, we’ve had three total bridge replacements in Salisbury over recent years, and because of grants and funding, they cost the town zero.�

The next step for this bridge, Rand said, is a restoration, and he is just as glad that this “do-able fix� had to be done now.

“It allowed us to really study the bridge, and it’s a good structure. It was done by the Berlin Bridge Company, which did other bridges around the area as well.�

For future maintenance and restoration of the bridge, the town is looking into painting it and putting on an entirely new deck. Rand said town officials will look into any exemptions, such as the fact that it’s a historic structure, which might make it  possible to tap into grants.