Deer Isle Originally published in Island Ad-Vantages, August 12, 2021 and The Weekly Packet, August 12, 2021 At last! Bridge paving begins Contractors start with waterproofing

Jean Robert Lachance stands in front of a shot-blasting machine at Bridge End Park. It’s one of only seven such machines in the world, Lachance says.

Repaving the Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge began on August 9, more than five weeks after the job was supposed to be finished on July 1.

Workers had taken up the old road surface, and when engineers inspected the naked structure they decided it might not bear the dead weight of construction equipment, according to Jean Robert Lachance, supervisor for subcontractor Venture Construction.

The inspectors found anomalies in the structure, he said in an interview.

So engineers decided to upgrade the bridge before allowing the heavy equipment to begin paving, he said.

Lachance explained that big machines, unlike moving vehicles, bunch up in the same spot on a bridge during construction.

It took a while to strengthen the bridge because workers could only weld steel on the underside of the bridge at low tide, Lachance said.

“The structure is safe,” he said.

On August 9, Venture workers began the first phase of paving: waterproofing the roadway. They’d just finished doing that work on the Mario Cuomo Bridge across the Hudson River, Lachance said.

On August 10, workers brought a large blue shot-blasting machine to Bridge End Park. It’s one of only seven such machines in the world, Lachance said. It prepares the roadway by blasting little BBs onto the surface.

Then, he said, workers will put a thin layer of primer down, from .009 to .010 of an inch thick. Then come two more layers. Tiny stone will be sprayed on while the third layer is curing.

Then another contractor will come to Deer Isle next week to begin paving with chip seal, a thin layer of asphalt, Lachance said.