Bridge building despite cold
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Neither rain, nor snow nor single-digit temperatures are stopping the construction of the Danco Drive bridge 
Nor did it affect the art of finessing, nor the creative problem solving.
More huge concrete culvert boxes, each weighing 37,000 pounds, continue to be hoisted into place. Fourteen of them will guide the water underneath the aged bridge. In brutally cold weather shortly after Christmas crews from NJR Construction LLC, along with Leo Crane, delicately placed the culvert boxes, one by one. They are doubled up, seven side by side, running underneath the bridge surface.
The behemoth crane uses straps to lift each culvert box off a trailer and put it in place. If something like a large pipe near the top level of the bridge is in the way, an excavator in the dry stream bed is used to nudge it alongside, tight and level, against the other culverts. 
And what if that didn’t work? Idea came from the operator of the crane: he’ll lift it up slightly as close as possible to the “blocking” pipe and then lower it and then move the straps on the opposite side of the pipe to move it closer to the other culvert boxes.
The only thing the single-digit temperatures did shut down was the asphalt plants. At the beginning of April the plants will reopen and, according to CME Smith Project Manager Mike Egan, the bridge surface will be milled down the day before asphalt is delivered. 
Weather permitting; they hope to have the bridge finished by mid-April.
The bridge is likely from the 1940s or 1950s. It crosses Harry Brook and measured 19.6 feet. 
The state had changed it rules years ago and left the inspection of any bridge under 20 feet as a town’s responsibility. The new Danco bridge will be 20 feet, 6 inches long and will go back on the state’s inspection “rolls,” according to Town Administrator Elaine Sistare.
Last year, she said the approximate cost for the bridge replacement is $2.6 million. Fifty percent of it is handled by the state and the other 50 percent is covered by the town. The grant was approved a couple years ago and the town had been adding to the capital projects budget to cover the town’s half. 

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