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Bridge loses legs a piece at a time

In a tricky maneuver, workers take down the causeway's old, damaged columns, slice by slice, from the ground up.

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published June 15, 2005

	[Times photo: Ted McLaren]
	Now that new columns for the Clearwater Memorial Causeway bridge have been built, the old ones are coming down. Crews are removing the damaged columns several feet at a time. Jerry Harder, a vice president for bridge builder PCL Civil Constructors, said he thinks workers will be able to meet the Sept. 1 deadline.

The nascent Clearwater Memorial Causeway has new legs. Now, the old cracked ones must come down.

It's the next chapter in the industrious and intricate fix of the yet-to-be-opened and oft-troubled bridge. Onlookers might be confused that for this job, crews will actually remove the columns from the ground up.

"When they're all done, nobody will know the columns were ever there," said Bill Adams, a senior project engineer with Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Work started in earnest Tuesday afternoon, with crews slicing a 3-foot section off the bottom of one of the four cracked bridge piers. The Florida Department of Transportation ordered contractors to replace the columns last year after engineers discovered they were damaged during construction.

As the concrete was removed Tuesday, the column hung about 60 feet above the water - hundreds of tons fixed from above by a series of steel brackets and ties. The bridge is strong enough to support the weight, said Jerry Harder, a vice president for bridge builder PCL Civil Constructors.

From there, crews will position a dolly underneath the hanging column. Then they'll lower the column toward the ground, cut out another section of concrete and roll it away from the pier.

Workers will lower and cut until the old column is in pieces on a nearby barge. They'll repeat the steps for the three other columns. The old columns will go to an artificial reef.

Adams said crews don't know how long the whole process will take because this is new territory - just like the process to build the replacement columns.

"They're going to have to do this several times," said Adams. "They're going to get good at it. They might get down to where they can do it (make a cut and remove the concrete) in 24 hours."

Contractors building the bridge said it would be more difficult to start cutting from the top, though a layman might see it as the logical starting point.

Harder said PCL crews would have trouble getting concrete pieces as heavy as 50 tons to the ground. Working around the new replacement columns on either side would also be onerous.

"If you take pieces from the top, even if they're small, they have to come down an distance of 60 feet initially," Harder said. "To handle a piece like that in that restricted space - it's a touchy process."

PCL and the state have been working for nearly a year on a fix for the 2,340-foot, $48.5-million bridge, which was supposed to open in 2004 as a showpiece project linking Clearwater's downtown to the beach.

As part of an agreement with the state, PCL agreed to finish the repairs and open the bridge by Sept. 1 - or face a $365,000 fine.

Removing the old columns is the last major part of the fix, Harder said.

He said he thinks workers will be able to meet the Sept. 1 deadline.

Aaron Sharockman can be reached at 727 445-4160 or asharockman@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 15, 2005, 00:43:17]