HUNTINGTON – Highway Superintendent Charles Dazelle said the news was confirmed on Wednesday that the town would receive a grant of $300,000 from the MassDOT’s Municipal Small Bridge Grant program to repair the Searle Road bridge over Pond Brook.
“I was shocked it went through,” Dazelle said. The bridge needs it. Dazelle said the ends of the beams are rotted, and it’s down to one lane.
Searle Road is also the only main road into Norwich Pond, with about 25 houses and 100 cabins on the other side of the bridge that would be cut off from fire, police, gas, and oil if the bridge went down.
Dazelle said that he will be going to Boston on Wed., March 29 to accept the grant. Next steps will be to get engineering quotes, and consult with Mark Devyider, the engineering contact with MassDOT.
Huntington Highway Superintendent Charles Dazelle. (Submitted photo)
“He’s in charge up there, I’ll work closely with him,” Dazelle said.
Dazelle said this is a new category for him as well as everyone else. He’s done a lot of work with Chapter 90 and CDBG highway projects, but not bridge work, which he said is so much different. He hopes that the work can be done to fix the bridge this summer.
“I’m so happy,” he said, adding that it would have taken three years of no work on any roads to save up the Chapter 90 money to fix the bridge.
So far, the first round of the Municipal Small Bridge Grant program has worked out well for the hilltowns of Western Mass. Blandford received a grant of $500,000 in February to repair bridges on Blandford Road and Gore Road that have deteriorated and are structurally deficient.
Tolland and Southwick are also on the list of communities that will be receiving grants.
The Municipal Small Bridge Program, signed into law on August 10, 2016, by Governor Baker, is a $50 million program to aid in the replacement and preservation of municipally-owned small bridges with spans of ten to twenty feet. These bridges are not eligible for federal aid under existing bridge replacement or rehabilitation programs and an increasing number of them are at high risk for full or partial closure in the near future due to their present conditions.
