(8/25) Emmitsburg’s Board of Commissioners and town staff invited representatives from the State Highway Administration (SHA) to speak about the tentative timeline for the completion of the Flat Run Bridge. The completion date given during the meeting, unfortunately, was even further out than the date released in last month’s edition of this paper.

SHA representatives confirmed to the Board that the bridge has in fact been delayed several times, but during the August town meeting, it was announced that the project completion date has now been pushed back even later than the April 2019 date to late fall of 2019.

In addition to the drainage issues which required a lengthy re-design phase, and the water line re-location issue which required negotiations with the town, contractor and state, Neil Haines, SHA Assistant District Engineer for District 7, also explained that the initial project start date was delayed due in part to a delay in the preparation and signing of the documents and paperwork needed to proceed forward with the project. These issues combined together pushed the completion date back until April 2019.

More recently, concerns with the foundation of the existing bridge arose. The SHA had the foundation investigated by a special consultant to ensure it would be structurally sound while they were working on it. This caused the completion date to be pushed back, once again, to August 2019. Concurrently, the wet weather experienced particularly this spring and summer has hindered the contractor’s ability to work efficiently and consistently on the bridge. This has caused work to be pushed back even further with an end date, hopefully, sometime during the late fall 2019.

Ross Klingon, a SHA Engineer working with Haines, said that phase 1 of the new structure is intended to be complete by this fall, allowing traffic running in two lanes on the new structure while the second phase of the structure is torn down and the rest of the structure is completed. "There is a very good chance that we can get this [phase] done this year," stated Klingon. By the end of this fall the first phase of the new structure will hopefully be complete and accessible to motor traffic. By next fall, the entire bridge and roadway improvements should be complete. "We’re trying to get these issues resolved as fast as we can," stated Haines. "but unfortunately, the extremely wet season weather hasn’t helped the work either."