Report: Deer Isle bridge in fair condition DOT official says that all deterioration on span is repairable

DEER ISLE – The bridge that connects Little Deer Isle to the mainland is in fair condition overall, according to a report summary released Thursday by the Maine Department of Transportation.

The report is the result of a recent in-depth inspection of the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge, according to DOT spokeswoman Carol Morris.

All of the deterioration found on the bridge, which connects Deer Isle and Sedgwick over Eggemoggin Reach, is repairable, Morris said Thursday. A public meeting on the physical condition of the bridge has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Deer Isle town office.

Morris said that the number of broken wires in each of the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge’s two main cables is “significantly less” than the number of broken wires found on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge.

Engineers determined last summer that the two cables on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, another suspension bridge that is 7 years older than the one in Deer Isle, had deteriorated much more than they previously had thought. State transportation officials since have decided to build a new span over the Penobscot River to replace the Waldo-Hancock Bridge.

The roughly 600 broken wires on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge constitute 22 percent of the 2,738 suspension wires on the bridge, Morris said. The recent inspection of the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge indicated that only 11 wires – or less than 1 percent of that bridge’s 1,482 wires – were broken, she said.

Morris said the 11 wires were broken when a construction worker accidentally cut them with a blowtorch in the late 1980s.

One key difference between the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge and the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, according to Morris, is that the cables on the Deer Isle bridge were not wrapped with wire, as were the cables on the older bridge. The cables on the Waldo-Hancock Bridge were wrapped in an attempt to keep out water, she said.

“What that essentially ended up doing was keeping the moisture in [the cables] and increasing the corrosion,” Morris said.

The lack of wire around the cables on the Deer Isle bridge means they are less susceptible to corrosion and are easier to inspect, she said.

Other elements of the bridge that have deteriorated include a delaminating, or separating, road surface and “isolated areas of moderate to extensive corrosion in the structural steel,” according to a prepared statement released Thursday by the DOT.

Morris said corrosion in the bridge is inevitable because of its location over Eggemoggin Reach, where it often is exposed to harsh weather conditions.

What work will be done to address the areas of deterioration, and how much money it will cost, has not been determined, Morris said. Repair work on the bridge likely will begin in 2005, she said.

The 2,400-foot Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge was built in 1938. It has been prone to movement throughout its lifetime and was closed briefly in 1978 when winds and an extended heat wave resulted in severe undulations.