Both lanes of the Anna Maria Island Bridge on Manatee Avenue are open following repairs to a collapsed water main on the underside of the bridge.
But the work is not done.
Additional repairs will require more lane closures in the coming weeks.
Manatee County information outreach manager Bill Logan wrote in a June 30 email to The Islander that Bradenton-based Woodruff & Sons installed a new pipeline across the bridge during the first phase of repairs.
About 1,000 feet of the 16-inch water main, which was installed in 1982, fell June 19 into Anna Maria Sound after the hangers holding it along the east end of the bridge failed.
The pipeline is supplementary to a 24-inch water main across Cortez Bridge. After a short cut-off of about an hour June 19, water service was restored but a drop in water pressure continued until county utility crews capped the line later that day.
Woodruff & Sons began repair work June 26 by putting together a new pipeline segment by segment in the right of way leading to the bridge across the street from the Kingfish Boat Ramp, 752 Manatee Ave., Holmes Beach.
Repair work required closing the eastbound lane of the bridge, resulting in alternating one-way traffic for a week.
That lane closure led to traffic gridlock, including more than hourlong delays, until June 29 when the lane reopened.
Manatee County Area Transit interim manager Chris DeAnnuntis told The Islander June 30 that travel delays fell to 20-30 minutes for MCAT services after June 26.
Nevertheless, DeAnnuntis said the lane closure posed an unavoidable obstacle for MCAT services since there are only two MCAT-accessible roads to the barrier island, including the AMI Bridge.
“It’s impacted us pretty significantly,” he said. “There’s not a lot of alternatives. We’re stuck in the same traffic as the regular cars are.”
By June 30, the contractor finished installing the new pipeline across the bridge and both lanes of traffic were reopened ahead of the July 4 holiday.
Logan wrote that there were no lane closures scheduled for the week of July 3 but additional closures were “expected” during phase 2 of repairs.
Phase 2 will involve securing additional hangers to support the new pipeline along the east side of the bridge, where the pipeline fell in the bay.
However, work on that phase was “not expected to start for several weeks due to material availability,” according to Logan.
DeAnnuntis said that, ahead of phase 2, MCAT would notify passengers of potential lane closures and delays.
“I think just getting information out to the passengers to let them know about the delays — that’s about the extent of what we can do,” DeAnnuntis said.
Woodruff & Sons’ equipment will remain on-site with the goal to remove the fallen water main from Anna Maria Sound.
“This work — which may begin as early as the week of July 10 — is not expected to require lane closures,” Logan wrote.
Blame game
In the meantime, one Holmes Beach commissioner voiced criticism of the maintenance.
The bridge is inspected every three months by the Florida Department of Transportation and after every major storm by the county.
Commissioner Dan Diggins, who investigated aircraft accidents before he retired, said June 27 that the pipeline’s collapse was “totally preventable.”
Diggins said he went into the water near the bridge to get a closer look and saw many failed hangers that had rusted over, leaving them compromised and unreliable.
“The design is what we used to call a ‘single-point failure,’” Diggins said. “If one hanger fails, within seconds — it’s like a zipper effect — they all fail. … All they had to do was inspect it. If they inspected it, they could see the rust.”
“This was totally preventable and it has inconvenienced all of us and it should have never happened,” he added.