Thomas MacMillan Photo
The bridge at Prospect and Trumbull Streets was supposed to reopen. Then a contractor for the gas company sawed right through the brand new construction.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” said City Engineer Dick Miller. “I can assure you it’s caused a lot of emotional trauma here in engineering.”
The mess-up happened about three weeks ago, according to Assistant City Engineer Larry Smith. A contractor for the Southern Connecticut Gas Company was “saw-cutting the street to put in a gas main,” Smith said. The worker went too far with his saw and ended up cutting right through part of the freshly rebuilt bridge.
The work is part of infrastructure improvements to Prospect Street, where several overlapping projects are ongoing. The city has been working on the bridge that goes over the Farmington Canal Rail Trail. Yale is putting overhead wires and utilities underground and the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) is working on a sewer project nearby.
The bridge was scheduled to open this past Monday. The sawing error has delayed the city’s work by about two months, Smith said.
Tom Sgrai, director of engineering for the WPCA, said the mistake has backed up other work in the area, including the WPCA’s project.
On Thursday morning, the area of the error was marked out with traffic cones (pictured above). The patched up square in the middle of the intersection of Prospect and Trumbull overlaps a dark band that indicates the joint where the bridge meets the road.
“I’ve never seen it done before,” Smith said. He described the mistake as one of “the most stupidest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The sawyer started out cutting through asphalt, then hit a brand new re-bar reinforced concrete slab and kept going. Smith said it would be like sawing a thin pine board then hitting heavy oak and continuing to cut without noticing the change.
Miller said the cost of the error is still being determined. It is a six-figure number, he said. The city will be making an insurance claim to cover it. The gas company is at fault, Miller said.
John Dobos, a spokesman for Southern Connecticut Gas, acknowledged that a contractor was responsible for the error. He said that company, Rhode Island’s CB Utilities, will ultimately pay for the repair.
The entire bridge will need to be redone, Miller said. “We just paid for a bridge to be brand new. We’re not going to have a patch job.”
The repair will entail ripping up the pavement, removing a membrane underneath, putting in new re-bar, new cap and sealant, a new membrane, and then repaving, Miller said.