1. Notice of Scoping to Rehabilitate Pucker St. Bridge over the Hop River

Address of Possible Project Location : Intersection of Rose’s Bridge Rd. in Columbia & Pucker St. in Coventry

Project Description: All funds requested would be used to allow the town of Columbia to pay for costs associated with the rehabilitation of the Pucker Street Bridge over the Hop River.  Specifically, STEAP grant funding would be used by Columbia to offset engineering and design costs, construction, permit, advertising costs and construction administration costs. It should be noted that construction administration costs will be paid to professional construction administrators.

Pucker Street is a two-lane rural local road within a lightly developed farm land and rural residential area.   In the late 1970’s the Bridge collapsed.  In the early 1980’s a semi-temporary repair was made placing a new 84 foot long one-lane superstructure on abutments that include the existing stone masonry abutments. The physical condition of the superstructure is good; however, the stone masonry abutments on which the superstructure sits are likely over 100 years old and are in fairly poor condition.  More importantly, the Bridge is functionally obsolete; the deck width is quite narrow and inadequate for bi-directional traffic. The narrow bridge width, coupled with poor approach roadway geometry presents a significant safety hazard.

Hydraulically, the existing Bridge is inadequate to handle the design storm (100 year event) without significant overtopping of the existing road.  The overtopping causes road closure on the Coventry side of the bridge, eliminating one of the few critical north-south links that may be needed in an emergency. Currently, the road begins to overtop at a storm event of less than the 10 year storm.  A subsurface investigation performed in December 2006, reveals that the existing Bridge abutments are founded on shallow spread footings with the bottom of footings at approximately 4 feet below the streambed and the depth to bedrock below these abutment footings is approximately 37 to 45 feet.  As the Bridge is not founded on bedrock or piles to bedrock and estimated scour depths are below the bottom of the existing bridge footings, the Bridge is considered to be scour critical or susceptible to failure due to scour.  In summary, the existing bridge is past its intended life.  Rehabilitating this bridge now will provide an essentially maintenance and worry free structure for the next 50 to 75 years.

Written comments from the public are welcomed and will be accepted until the close of business on:  July 19, 2012

Any person can ask the sponsoring agency to hold a Public Scoping Meeting by sending such a request to the address below.  If a meeting is requested by 25 or more individuals, or by an association that represents 25 or more members, the sponsoring agency shall schedule a Public Scoping Meeting.  Such requests must be made by June 29, 2012.

Written comments and/or requests for a Public Scoping Meeting should be sent to:

If you have questions about the public meeting, or other questions about the scoping for this project, contact: