by Karina Hunter

Slowdown in the forestry sector in Manitouwadge is not all bad news as Buchanan Woodlands Inc takes this opportunity to supervise a bridge repair project on behalf of Great West Timber Ltd next week.

Jeff Mundy, Operations Forester for Buchanan Woodlands Inc.,explained that repairs on the Black River Bridge on Manitouwadge’s Camp 70 road will begin Monday, August 24^th. Bridge repairs will be carried out by T and K Sharpe Construction and will follow an MNR (Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources) approved engineered design developed by Bruce Adamson, Engineering Consultant with Adamson Consulting of Thunder Bay, ON. Though alternate access is available through the south via the Lampson road, contractor Terry Sharp, has assured affected parties that every effort will be made to minimize disruption to regular traffic flow during this time by providing opportunity to access the area during the estimated 10 day construction project.   

The 192 foot bridge originally installed by Ontario Paper Company in 1968 has had a number of inspections and engineer evaluations over the years, carried out and or paid for by the MNR with at least 3 additional engineer evaluations paid for by Buchanan Forest Products on behalf of Great West Timber since 1998.  These of course were in addition to regular inspections by both company and MNR staff.  The reports during the 1990’s indicated that the end cribs of the bridge, which has two piers, had settled since the structure was installed; this was not a safety issue but if the situation worsened it could lead to distortion of the bridge deck.  Monitoring and reports over the past ten years have confirmed that further settling seems to have been minimal though it was acknowledged that a full repair involving installation of new cribs at either end needed to be scheduled at some point. 

The two piers are in excellent shape and the bridge steel is also fine but with the slowdown of logging in the Black River Forest this year, and access to the MNR’s road funding program it was determined that this would be an ideal time to deal with the aforementioned issues and the opportunity is being taken while undergoing the current repairs to build up the deck with a new layer of timbers and running planks.

Submitted to the Chronicle Journal & The Echo, 08.21.09