Official: Madrid bridge could open by end of 2009

MADRID — It was a much quieter, and smaller, group that came out Wednesday to hear that the bridge in the middle of town will be open again by the end of next year if all goes as planned.

After a raucous meeting in August, state Department of Transportation officials pulled out all the stops to get the stone bridge — the cause of an eight-mile detour that divides the hamlet — rehabilitated quickly.

"A lot of begging, a lot of cajoling, a lot of calling in favors," DOT spokesman Michael R. Flick said. "We've heard what these folks have had to say, everybody's gotten the message. We're focused on our efforts in Madrid and the Fort Drum connector."

The Fort Drum connector road will link the military base to Interstate 81 and cost an estimated $80 million. By contrast, the Madrid project will take $5.8 million to reconstruct the bridge and make improvements to Route 345.

The two projects are the department's highest priorities in the north country, the only ones officials refuse to push back despite budget reductions, according to DOT officials.

The nine-arch stone bridge was built in 1882, without blueprints or plans. Cracks in it have been monitored since 2006. In May, they were found to have widened so much that the bridge's safety could no longer be guaranteed.

Since then, engineers have been studying the bridge to determine how it was built and how it could be fixed to ensure its stability. The state was unwilling to demolish the bridge because of its historic significance.

The dirt core of the bridge will be replaced with concrete to reduce stress on the historic structure. Stones that have fallen out over the years will be replaced. The bridge will look the same when the work is finished, but it will be more secure.

"When we start taking out the fill that hasn't come out in 130 years, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what the rainfall is going to be or what the river's going to do," Mr. Flick said. "There are some risks that we have to take and we'll do the best we can."

The project design will be approved by DOT in January. Bids for the job will be solicited in late spring and work will start immediately after a contract is let. The plan is that the bridge will be open to traffic by December 2009. At the August meeting, residents were told the bridge would not be open until 2010 at the earliest.

Concerns about riverweed, a threatened species, and populations of river sturgeon, which use spawning beds in that part of the Grasse River, threatened to slow the project down over the summer. DOT officials say they have been meeting with people from the Department of Environmental Conservation to find a compromise that will both protect the ecology of the river and allow work to continue.

Those who braved the weather to come to the meeting seemed pleased with the announcement.

"It looks like it's going to be a big improvement," resident Gary M. Hartson said. "I think the results from that last meeting proved to them that they had to do something different. They cut the project in half."