Community Corner

No Completion in Sight for Elm Street Bridge

County in dispute with contractor, Oradell Borough engineer says.

The anticipated completion date of July 15 for repairs to the Elm Street Bridge has come and gone with no completion date in site.

According to Marisa Tiberi, engineer for the Borough of Oradell, the county has informed her that the repair project has been 'significantly delayed' because the contractor has halted work and has been unresponsive to county engineers. Tiberi said that the county is dealing with legal counsel to look at their options. 

Referring to the length of time this project has taken, Oradell Councilman Garrie Murphy said incredulously, "It only took one year to build the Empire State Building."

After much delay, it was anticipated that the the $1 million expansion and renovation of the Elm Street Bridge would be completed by March 2013 after a heron was discovered nesting there. That date was extended to July 2013. 

The three ton bridge has been closed to vehicular traffic since 2008. In 2011 it was included on a list of structurally deficient bridges in a report released by Transportation for America, a Washington, D.C.-based public transportation advocacy organization that maps and rates the structural integrity of all 600,000 bridges in the United States.

Owned by Bergen County, the bridge splits Elm Street, a borough owned road that leads from Oradell into New Milford. It's 76-feet long and 20-feet wide, but due to age and the constant flooding in the area, there has been significant damage and deterioration to the stringer beams underneath the metal bridge decking. 

Work on the 1892 pony-truss style bridge was initially expected to begin in April 2012 but was pushed back two months to allow the heron's clutch to hatch. The County-owned bridge is expected to be widened by two-feet and the weight limit increased from three-tons to 40-tons to meet federal standards.

The Bergen County Freeholders adopted a bond ordinance in April 2010 to be used in part for funding the rehabilitation, but the rehabilitation project has yet to be completed. 

Although no recent work has been done on the site, exposed construction debris litters the area surrounding the bridge--construction fencing, pieces of metal, hooks, pipes and pieces of wood are among the debris littering the area surrounding the site that pedestrians, runners and bikers still use. 

Stay tuned for updates to this article. 

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