Big changes to Tower Hill bridge

AMENIA — In the latest fight against dirt roads in town, the water flooding down Tower Hill Creek after a heavy rain will have a tough time wreaking havoc on the newest bridge on Tower Hill Road.

Work finished Aug. 10 on the bridge, and most noticeably included installing an aluminum box culvert measuring 15 feet 9 inches wide and 8 feet tall. Additionally a 60-inch culvert pipe was installed next to a 72- inch pipe for further drainage support.

Why so much? As town Highway Superintendent Stan Whitehead explained on site, bad weather has a history of tearing apart the bridges and roads on some of Amenia’s more notorious back roads, including Tower Hill and nearby Cascade Mountain. The water comes down the mountain and rushes into the seemingly innocuous brooks and creeks along those roads, often overflowing and washing out the road itself after a bad storm.

To put a figure to it, back at the highway garage Whitehead flipped through work records, tallying nearly $45,000 in damage repairs on Tower Hill since 2004.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) funds provided about $10,000 toward culvert pipes for the bridge project, but Whitehead said the rest of the project, which totalled a little more than $88,000, was paid for out of the highway department’s budget the past few years.

The Tower Hill bridge is just the latest in the department’s efforts to rein in water damage to back roads and bridges. Prior projects have included installing larger culverts on Cascade Road and Folan Road.

“We did Tower Hill all ourselves,� Whitehead said, adding that if the project had been contracted out it would have cost the town at least $200,000.

“Even Pete Setaro [an engineer with Morris Associates] said, ‘Other towns don’t do projects like this,’� Whitehead said. “It’s unbelievable the amount of money we’ve saved the town.�

It’s ultimately a matter of scheduling as to when the highway department needs to contract out, according to Whitehead. The crew would likely have taken on the Nelson Hill Road bridge in downtown Wassaic if not for Tower Hill, he said. That project, which was contracted out, began a little more than a month ago and is scheduled to finish by the end of the month.

The abutments underneath the bridge were being eroded by floods, Whitehead explained. The rocks beneath the bridge, on the banks of Deep Hollow Creek, have been subsequently “slurry sealed� so water can’t get between them and cause future damage. Slurry sealing is a process that prevents water from getting into bridge abutments.

The one-lane bridge is also being widened an extra 4 feet, and as Whitehead said, the tight squeeze has been an issue for everyone from the fire department to the town’s snow plows to the mail man.

“The plows would be hitting the side it was so narrow,� Whitehead said, pointing out the repeated damage to the guardrails. “And everything would hit the guardrail, then the bolts would loosen,� he said, pushing the railing back and forth for effect. “It was way too tight of a fit before.�

Finally, the highway crew has also recently addressed a long-standing flooding problem on Railroad Avenue, created when O’Hanley  Road was put in years ago. The Highway Department installed an additional 200 feet of 24-inch pipe along private property that has an easement with the town, running drain-off water into a catch basin and under Railroad Avenue.

Moving forward, Whitehead and his crew  are looking to repair another flooding area on Willow Lane in the southern part of town. That project recently received the Town Board’s approval as its pick for the 2011 Community Development Block Grant application for up to $150,000 of funding from the county. (For more details on that project, read the accompanying article on this page.)