Re: river is running

Posted by Rick (Lyle's Dad) on June 23, 2012, 5:28 pm, in reply to "Re: river is running"
173.216.233.168

Lois, I am a structural engineer. Specifically, I spent a large part of my career designing bridges. In my opinion, yes, the occassional vehicle would be fine but I personally would not suggest extensive vehicle traffic. My biggest concern is the knucklehead approach to the river that occured this off season which was the heavy digging and gouging of the river. Dave Collins asked Pepe what they did that for and they said it was to keep the river from eroding the sides more. They picked the wrong approach, BIG TIME! What they did not realize, too late, was that they created this deeper (they went 5 ft. below the old river bed) and wider (about 10-12 feet wide) canal that now has a loose bottom. This will probably lead to a very, very rocky beach as the new loose material will spew to the mouth of the river. But that is not the 1/2 of it. Only after doing a butt load of this deepening and widening did they realize that they could not continue this process in the vicinity of the yellow vehicular bridge. Why? Because the footings that hold the vertical bridge structural supports at each end are set and they are not very deep. So, they decided that they could not dig here because they would undermine the footings. They punched that ticket already in my opinion. Mother Nature is going to undermine the footings with scour action because they loosened the river bed too close to the bridge. It will find a new way to deepen the river. It being the river. If this rain keeps up, that bridge might be toast in my opinion b/c of this 'brainiac' move to save the sides. Furthermore, they guaranteed that there will be deep pools upstream of the bridge that will be awesome for skeeters later on until the sun dries the upstream pools. See also the same approach at the bridge near Martin's that is now wet nearly year around and fetid and skeetery. They should have used gabions full of stones to protect the sides much as they did in the stream across the road from the military base over in Melaque. The "bull in a china closet do first and think later" (which is way too common) will cause bigger problems later that cost more money and need more attention. Oh well, it was an election year and perhaps there was more money flowing than adequate contemplative thought.

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