Published: May 04, 2009 07:30 pm      

ENGINEERING: Bartz Road bridge to be replaced this summer

Town waiting for school’s end to remove existing red-flagged span

TOWN OF LOCKPORT — The Bartz Road bridge across Mud Creek will be torn out and replaced this summer.

The town board on Monday awarded a bid to a contractor that will work with the highway department to rebuild the bridge, which was weight-posted and shut down to one lane after a state transportation department inspection last summer.

Husted Concrete Products of New York Mills, N.Y. got the job of manufacturing and placing concrete planks for the bridge. Its’ $31,000 bid came in at about half of what the town expected, engineer Rob Klavoon said, so replacement cost should be less than $100,000.

The existing bridge, on Bartz near Old Beattie Road, has to be taken out. Work won’t begin until early July, after school is out, Klavoon said. The project will probably take three to four weeks, during which the bridge will be out of use.

The highway department will dismantle the existing bridge, modify the abutments and pave over the new concrete planks. Husted will also install new guide rails on the bridge.

In other business Monday, the board:

n Approved, on a 4-1 vote, contracting with the Cornell Cooperative Extension to test soil at the Day Road Park soccer fields, at a cost not to exceed $500. Klavoon said soil sampling would help a Wendel Duchscherer arborist make a better recommendation on how to keep up the fields. Board member Paul Pettit voted against the expenditure, saying he thought it unnecessary. Cheryl Antkowiak endorsed sampling, saying that since the town is aiming to market the fields to different groups and tournament organizers, “we should make them the best they can be.”

n Heard from Klavoon that the town’s protest and appeal of the proposed, federal flood plain map will be mailed to Federal Emergency Management Agency by May 11. The deadline for filing appeals is May 17. The proposed map shows 115 properties newly added into the flood plain and the town is arguing 34 of them should be removed, based on elevation data.

The towns of Pendleton and Wheatfield also are known to be filing formal appeals of the mapping process; the way FEMA is working the approval process in Niagara County, no municipalities’ maps will be finalized until all appeals are settled. The approval process began in December 2008 here and normally takes about one year, but if it’s faced with appeals FEMA will stop all approval work until those are worked out, a state floodplain management officer said previously.

Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.