BRIDGE PROJECT PROCEEDS, CONCRETE POURED

Construction workers poured about 700 yards of concrete Tuesday in the first of six pours on the foundation for a bridge pier taking shape in the middle of the Mississippi River.

The pier work is another step in the construction of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge at Cape Girardeau.

The initial pour involved about 100 truckloads of cement. The work began about 5 a.m. and ended about 12 hours later.

"I think everything went as well as expected," said Larry Owens, project manager for Traylor Brothers Inc., the contractor on the bridge project.

Over the next two months, three more concrete pours are scheduled. About 1,100 yards of concrete will be poured each time, Owens said.

Two more pours, one of 5,200 yards of concrete and another involving about 2,000 yards of the building material, are expected to occur next year.

In all, the pier foundation will involve about 11,200 yards of concrete, Owens said. The concrete is being poured into a steel caisson larger than a river barge.

The concrete is poured inside the caisson walls, allowing the cutting edge of the structure to sink deeper and deeper into the riverbed over the next several months.

The work is taking place inside the coffer dam in the middle of the Mississippi River.

Even after all the concrete is poured, Owens said the foundation of the pier will still be 30 feet below the water surface.

"None of that will be visible once we are done," Owens said.

On Tuesday, the concrete was hauled across the old Mississippi River Bridge to the Illinois side and then dumped into a hopper, emptied into large buckets on a barge and towed to the pier site. There, a crane emptied the buckets of concrete into the caisson in the coffer dam.

Rick Lamb, senior construction inspector for the Missouri Department of Transportation, said the highway department postponed its maintenance work on the existing bridge Tuesday to better accommodate the cement trucks.

While the foundation work is important, the public will see little of it, Lamb said. "It really is going to be tough to see anything unless you are looking right at it."

Owens said about 70 to 80 construction workers currently are involved with the project. Another 15 people and more equipment are expected when work resumes on construction of a half-finished concrete pier on the Missouri shore, he said.

Lamb said that work could begin In November.

Owens said some additional cranes will be brought in for the job. "It takes an unusually large crane with an unusually large boom to reach that high," he said.

The massive, concrete pier on the Missouri shore stands about 160 feet above the ground. Owens said pier 2 will be about 180 feet taller when completed.

The pier has stood unfinished since the original contractor, Flatiron Structures, bowed out of the project in 1997 after a bedrock problem was discovered in the area where pier 3 is being built.

A separate contractor was hired to repair the mud seams in the bedrock, clearing the way for this year's pier work in the middle of the river.