After Maumee River floods last year disrupted work a few times during construction of the first half of a new State Rt. 64 bridge over the Maumee River, the project contractor decided to build the second half’s temporary river causeway taller to reduce the risk of delay.
What Archbold, Ohio-based Miller Brothers Construction didn’t anticipate was that this year’s flooding would be worse, jeopardizing the new bridge’s opening later this year.
Now, because of repeated delays, the anticipated mid-September opening time is being delayed to the end of the year, although that could easily be pushed to spring of 2020, said Rebecca Dangelo, the Ohio Department of Transportation’s district spokesman in Bowling Green.
“Who would’ve known this was going to be such a rainy spring?” Ms. Dangelo said Friday. “This taller causeway has flooded many times, sometimes for days at a time.”
That limits what work crews can do and, after the water recedes, crews will have to spend time restoring the causeway and removing debris, she said.
The Waterville Bridge isn’t the only Maumee River span currently being replaced, and work on the new Clinton Street Bridge in Defiance also is being disrupted by chronic high water.
Rhonda Pees, ODOT’s Lima-based spokesman, said as of Friday, contractor Great Lakes Construction of Hinckley, Ohio had been granted 10 weather-delay days because of river conditions, which pushes that project’s completion date back from Nov. 22 to Dec. 2.
Great Lakes has been working on dry-land portions of the project, such as sanitary and storm sewers, and building cofferdams along the riverbanks that can be moved into place for pier foundations once the water goes down, Ms. Pees said.
The contractor has worked several recent Saturdays when weather allowed it, the ODOT spokesman added, and may call its workers out on Independence Day as well.
“Schedules are still being analyzed, and that will continue throughout the project,” she said.
The Defiance bridge, which carries State Rts. 15, 18, and 66 over the Maumee, was closed in late February with traffic officially detoured to the Domersville Road (State Rt. 281) bridge east of the city.
The new Waterville Bridge is being built next to the old one, which remains open to traffic, so the traffic impact of its delay is limited to the inconveniences of continuing to use the old bridge and driving through a work zone.
Ms. Dangelo said Miller Brothers had, through May 31, lost 67 working days to flooding since construction began last year. Besides the spring’s chronic rain, the Maumee also flooded during the winter because of ice jams.
Other ODOT projects in the region have been running late because of the rain, but their delays have not been as significant as the bridge replacements have incurred.
As of Friday, the greatest uncertainty involved the reconstruction of the southbound exit on I-475/U.S. 23 to westbound U.S. 24.
“Little earthwork has been able to be performed thus far because we can’t safely do that in the rain,” Ms. Dangelo said. “There is a three-month settlement period once the earthwork is complete before the roadway can be constructed.”
Instruments in the ground will monitor the settling process, she said, and if that ends early some time could be made up, but right now that work is about two weeks behind schedule.
First Published June 23, 2019, 10:47 p.m.
