Salmon Kill Bridge faces more delay

SALISBURY — On a bright day in early July, a cheerful, local contractor ventured down to the construction site at Salmon Kill Bridge, curious about the progress that contractor, Hemlock Construction Co., had made since construction resumed in the spring.

The town closed Salmon Kill Road for construction on Sept. 19, 2022, initially anticipating a reopening in spring 2023, but the project has been beset by delays. In April, Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand said he hoped the bridge would reopen in August or September.

Now the state Department of Transportation (DOT) anticipates a reopening at the end of November.

“See that drill rig?” asked the contractor, pointing to a tall, compact machine on a low set of caterpillars; it looked like a mechanical blue giraffe wearing a gas mask. “That should’ve been the first piece of equipment on the site, and the first piece out.”

The road closure, he said, added 20 minutes to each commute between Torrington and Salisbury for him and his employees.

“We’re losing valuable time,” he said.

Repeated delays

The cause of these delays is a concrete and metal mass discovered below the failing eastern abutment of the bridge.

Shortly after the state contractor, Torrington-based Hemlock Construction Co., began construction last September, dismantling the failing eastern abutment of the bridge, they found an unanticipated concrete subfooting, which was encased by and embedded with sheet piling (rolled steel walls sometimes used to support concrete bridge abutments).

In October, Hemlock reported that the steel in the subfooting was obstructing their execution of the original design for the new bridge. In November of  2022, Hemlock concluded that the sheet piling was too embedded in the concrete to remove: the subfooting would need to be analyzed, and the bridge redesigned around the existing pilings.

The DOT, which is overseeing the construction of the bridge, said that the subfooting had been omitted from the as-built plans from the 2002 construction—an error that has resulted in the ongoing series of delays plaguing the bridge project.

“It feels very disconnected and isolating to be cut off from the rest of the Salmon Kill community and Salisbury,” said Ali De Prodocini, who lives on Salmon Kill Road in the house she grew up in. She and her partner returned to Salmon Kill when they had their son, Declan.

Declan, now 8, attends Salisbury Central, and when the road closed last September the school bus could no longer reach the house. “We had to bring him to the end of Salmon Kill and 112 at 7 am, which means he would be on the bus for an hour and a half, [so] we drove him every day pretty much.” But they won’t be able to do that this year.

“Our end of Salmon Kill is full of kids,” she said. “But it feels like no one is in a rush to fix this.”

“The constituents are not happy,” said Rand. “No one is happy about it, but everyone understands that there’s delays.”

2002 bridge

The original structure, a two-lane bridge spanning the Salmon Kill, opened to traffic in 2003. Just one decade later, it became clear that the concrete in its eastern abutment was failing.

Overseen by the DOT, a bridge safety inspection team evaluated the new bridge every two years. In 2012, the concrete in the bridge’s eastern abutment was rated “6,” or “satisfactory”; in 2014, it earned a “4,” or “poor,” signaling “advanced section loss, deterioration, spalling, scour.”

Josh Morgan, spokesman for the DOT, added that “a bridge in poor condition does not mean it is unsafe, it simply means that the bridge requires rehabilitation to return it to a state of good repair.”

DOT concluded that “spalling”— the term for the internal breakdown and disintegration of concrete, a naturally porous material, caused by the expansion of freezing water — had affected only the eastern abutment, while the western abutment, which had been poured with a different batch of concrete and sits on bedrock, was deemed “in good condition,” and will be incorporated into the new bridge.

In 2020, the DOT performed a Rehabilitation Study Report, assessing different design or rehab options for the existing structure and comparing their relative merits, and decided on replacing the eastern abutment and the entire bridge deck. In early 2022, Stantec Inc., an international design consulting firm founded in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, completed a design for the new bridge; in July 2022, DOT awarded the project to Hemlock.

DOT expects the resulting bridge to last 75 years and survive “a 500-year storm.”

A new bridge

During Hemlock’s winter shutdown, the DOT, Hemlock, and Soil X, Corp.—a soil exploration, boring, and drilling company from Leominster, Massachusetts—managed to ascertain the locations and grades of the sheet pile buried in the concrete. A new design called for drilling 35 well-placed bores through the subfooting—a step that was finally completed in late June.

In all, the assessment, redesign, drilling, and other unforeseen costs will add another $272,000 to the now $2.1 million-project. Salisbury is responsible for 20% of the project’s cost, while DOT, using a combination of state and federal funds, will reimburse the town for the other 80%.

Hemlock finished driving the 35 micropiles through the bores in the last week of July. Their next task is to pour the new eastern abutment and the wingwalls, then lay the new superstructure beams on the abutments, and finally install the bridge deck. The hope is to finish the bridge before Hemlock’s winter shutdown begins—by Nov. 30 of this year.

“As with any construction project, rain or inclement weather can impact the schedule of work,” warned Morgan. “The contractor and inspection staff will be mindful of any rain events and take the necessary precautions to reduce any avoidable delays.

Assuming no further surprises, once the construction is deemed adequately complete, a semi-final inspection will be performed.”

“We are still just finishing with the ‘unforeseen circumstances,’” said Rand. “The end of the year, that’s our deadline. That’s my personal deadline to get this done.”