Around 2pm this afternoon a sizable hole was noticed on the North Main Street Bridge in the north bound lane. The village and town crews acted quickly to address the situation closing off the bridge and calling in the county engineer for an assessment. The county engineer made the call to close the bridge for the time being for safety reasons as there may be yet unseen instabilities.
The visible hole is about 3 feet in diameter from what can be observed from behind the barricade. This damage I'm told goes to about 25 feet below the visible hole. The bridge engineer who can best advise on what can be done to repair or reopen the bridge is scheduled to come out on Tuesday morning. For those of you just joining this week today is Monday so Tuesday is the very next available day for the bridge to be evaluated.
While it is too soon for a full assessment to be available it's assumed the damage to the bridge was due to the flooding this past week which rose to just under the bridge decking. It is absolutely outside of the village and town's control to re-open the bridge at this time as once the county engineer deems it unsafe the bridge guy needs to come out to tell the town what can be done.
There is absolutely no way at all, literally ZERO percent chance, that the bridge is opening until after it is cleared by the bridge engineer Tuesday (which is tomorrow). No amount of getting saucy with the village or town crews or mayor will get you any traction on re-opening the bridge. If you were unaware and have already gotten saucy I hear they're all very reasonable people and will accept apologies.
All in all it sounds like the village, town, and county are just trying to prevent the bridge from collapsing and swallowing your car and family. It's going to be inconvenient until it can be fully evaluated and fixed, but pretty much everyone is working to make that happen. And yeah, we all miss the Water Street Bridge.
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