PennDOT to demolish 122-year-old Skinners Falls-Milanville Bridge over Delaware River because of irreparable structural problems. Nationwide Park Carrier has set stipulations to give protection to the river’s herbal qualities all through demolition procedure.
PennDOT picture
The Pennsylvania Division of Transportation (PennDOT) started preparatory paintings Feb. 26, 2025 in rural Wayne County to demolish the deteriorated Skinners Falls-Milanville Bridge around the Delaware River to New York State.
The Pennsylvania Division of Transportation (PennDOT) started preparatory paintings Feb. 26, 2025, in rural Wayne County to demolish the deteriorated Skinners Falls-Milanville Bridge around the Delaware River to New York State.
After figuring out November 2024 that razing the span was once the most suitable option after years of maintenance to the construction, PennDOT’s crews are beginning web page preparation and causeway structure on the long-closed bridge.
The Nationwide Park Carrier (NPS) issued a allow to PennDOT for the demolition in mid-February, taking away one of the most ultimate hurdles to the venture.
Even though the calls had been loud and assertive from involved non-public electorate and organizations impassioned to peer the historical, 122-year-old bridge stored, what the Higher Delaware Valley is also listening to in coming weeks are the sounds of explosives to carry it down, reported the Tri-County Impartial in within sight Honesdale, Pa.
PennDOT mentioned {that a} managed demolition is best than an out of control cave in must the cracked New York abutment or slowly-breaking bridge spans in any case give means, a particularly bad consequence must someone be within sight or passing beneath it on the time.
The company has been stressing the want to have the previous Baltimore truss bridge got rid of previous to the unofficial get started of the Delaware River’s game season on Memorial Day weekend, in step with the Impartial.
The Skinners Falls-Milanville Bridge is a 466-ft.-long construction that till October 2019 carried cars on Pa. Freeway 1002/Calkins Street and Skinners Falls Street in Cochecton, N.Y., over a unmarried picket visitors lane.
After present process a sequence of visitors closures because of noticed structural problems, adopted by means of emergency maintenance and re-openings, a motive force’s grievance and next PennDOT District Bridge Unit inspection that October, known bushes deck and lateral truss bracing deterioration, which resulted in the bridge being shuttered.
Any other inspection this previous October confirmed that the bridge superstructure was once in a vital situation and the substructure had failed. PennDOT analyzed other choices and made up our minds “demolition was once important to do away with the danger to public protection.”
In January, engineers once more tested the construction earlier than confirming that the New York-side abutment and upstream truss bearing spaces “are actively shifting. It will be significant to take away the bridge as temporarily as imaginable to stop an out of control cave in.”
In the meantime, the Damascus Electorate for Sustainability (DCS), a grassroots group based totally in Milanville, Pa., issued a press unlock on Feb. 21, 2025, regarding a letter of intent the gang licensed and despatched to PennDOT in a last-ditch try to save the bridge.
The group has reinforce from an organization that makes a speciality of restoring deteriorated, vintage truss bridges and offered its plan to PennDOT previous in February.
In reaction, the state transportation division identified why the recovery plan would now not paintings and instructed that there was once now not sufficient time to pursue the choice given the frailty of the bridge and its risk to public protection with hotter spring temperatures edging nearer.
Nationwide Park Services and products Lays Out A number of Stipulations
The NPS evaluation mentioned that tearing down the Skinners Falls Bridge is not going to have large affects to the Delaware River’s wild and scenic qualities, however the federal company did set out a sequence of stipulations PennDOT will have to observe to keep the river, the River Reporter in Narrowsburg, N.Y., simply downstream from the span, mentioned in an internet article.
Destroying the construction is not going to degrade the “water high quality, free-flowing situation, cultural, ecological, geological, leisure and scenic values” of the river, in step with the NPS.
Most of the stipulations contain protecting the river’s herbal qualities.
For instance, to make sure towards the degradation of the Delaware River’s free-flowing nature, PennDOT will have to use “pre- and post-construction bathymetric surveys” to ensure it does now not injury the river mattress or riverbank. If any injury does happen, PennDOT will have to repair it.
The stipulations additionally guard towards side effects to leisure use of the river.
The bridge demolition plan calls for that the river be closed to visitors for about two months. On the other hand, the venture time-frame — 76 days all through the low-traffic wintry weather and spring months — method it’ll now not have vital affects to game at the river, in step with the NPS.
“The demolition and causeway removing will have to be finished by means of Would possibly 25, 2025, to steer clear of vital destructive affects to leisure use of the river all through top season,” the park provider mentioned, including that if PennDOT follows the mitigation efforts defined within the stipulations set forth by means of the NPS, the venture don’t have everlasting injury to the “cultural and scenic values” of the river hall.
As well as, PennDOT will have to entire the method it began in 2019 of inspecting choices to the historical bridge at that web page. NPS really helpful {that a} “thoughtfully designed alternative bridge” may just care for the attraction of the previous truss bridge and required {that a} alternative construction be “aesthetically in line with the hall.”
PennDOT engineers additionally will have to attempt to save as a lot of the stone as imaginable from the prevailing bridge to make use of for its alternative, the River Reporter famous in its Feb. 19 tale.
Right through the final week of February, the contractor began shifting apparatus and fabrics to the New York State public river boating get admission to automobile parking space at the rapid downstream facet of the bridge.
“[On] February 26, paintings will start on Skinners Falls W Street close to the railroad crossing,” PennDOT added in its information unlock. “Minor enhancements to the roadway grade are important to house structure apparatus. The street will likely be useable and stay open all through structure.”
