Work continues on Emerson bridge -- weather permitting

With its gray concrete towers and steel lines appearing drawn against the sky, the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge project defines Cape Girardeau's downtown horizon.

That imposing figure started to look even more distinctive on Wednesday when new cable installation began on Pier 3, located in the middle of the Mississippi River. Pier 2's cable work on the Missouri side of the river got under way in May 2002.

"This is a major milestone for the bridge construction," said area engineer Stan Johnson. "We're doing everything we can to get the bridge done as soon as possible. Although we have a couple more concrete pours to make to top off Pier 3 and get it to the same height as Pier 2, we are moving right ahead and getting the cable process started."

Winter's hazards slowed the process in December, but the $100 million project is still expected to be finished in the fall, said project manager Larry Owens of Traylor Brothers Inc., the firm handling the majority of the project.

"We missed about 14 working days in December due to ice and snow," he said. "Basically, the whole job gets held up because the steel is slippery and dangerous to work on if it's ice-covered."

Lately though, a low river level is a concern, Johnson said. While work can still be done, if the river gets much lower barges may have trouble delivering materials to the site.

The additional concrete pours needed won't affect cable installation, which is expected to be finished on time, barring any more weather problems.

"If we have no flooding this spring, we'll be finished with the cable work on Pier 3 by the end of the summer," Owens said. The cable system was purchased from a French bridge cable construction firm, Freyssinet, which provided an on-site engineer to assist in the installation and to coordinate shipments of materials.

Tension in the cables holds up the bridge. They are strung diagonally from the towers to the bridge deck. The sections will be alternately installed from each leg of each pier until they meet and the span is connected.

"It's important to keep the tower balanced," Johnson said. "If we just strung the cables on one side, it would pull the pier tower in that direction."

The bridge consists of 15 piers, most on the Illinois side, with Piers 2, 3 and 4 as the main piers. Each of the 128 cables on the bridge actually consists of a system of smaller cable strands. The cable seen on the outside is actually a high-density polyethylene pipe, through which each cable strand is fed. The entire cable will range in thickness from 7 to 9 inches. Each of the smaller cable strands inside are about finger-width. In total, the bridge will have 4,604 cable strands, which could be lined up end to end for 171 miles.

The cables range from 143 feet to nearly 600 feet in length. After installation, a cable is fitted with grout, securing the smaller cable strands inside and making the entire cable a solid structure.

mwells@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160