Bridges’ construction underway
Construction of the Wekiva Parkway bridges across the Wekiva River has begun, a colossal task in a fragile ecosystem with the tricky goal of hiding a mass of concrete amid cypress canopies.
Initial pilings have been pounded into bedrock, providing a hint of what’s to come: three spans side by side. Their center sections will horizontally span 360 feet, amounting to a leap across the river so that no part of the bridges touch water and the view beneath is completely open.
“When we were originally talking about this bridge and what it might look like, and we had design sessions with DOT, we realized that it was going to be large,” said Nancy Prine, longtime member of the Friends of the Wekiva River.
“It’s larger than we had imagined,” Prine said.
Still, she called the bridges a “win” for wildlife, the river, people paddling canoes and kayaks, nearby residents and motorists.
Costing $39 million, it may be the most contemplated bridge project ever in Central Florida.
Because the river is one of only two in Florida designated as a National Wild and Scenic River, the National Park Service led design reviews several years ago that included the Florida Department of Transportation, area residents and environmentalists. Their effort was to lessen the bridges’ visual, structural and construction impacts.
Builders have had to construct a temporary road and industrial boardwalk to near the edge of the river for cranes and other equipment. But they’ve shielded the Wekiva on both sides with two rows of plastic fencing and two floating barriers — doubling the ordinary amount of such measures — to keep out any dirty runoff.
The two main piers on either side of the river will rise from foundations, with each comprised of 38 pilings pounded dozens of feet into the ground. Once piers are place, what will follow are mechanized acrobatics.
With rolling hoists and scaffolds, Superior Construction workers will extend bridge decking outward from the piers segment by segment to meet in the middle above the river.
“This enables them to be able to work over the river without having any men or equipment or barges or anything in the river,” said Robert Bennett of RS&H, which is overseeing work for the Florida Department of Transportation. “There will be no impact to the environment.”
As the last leg of expressway circling Orlando, the tolled Wekiva Parkway emerged from decades of controversy and funding challenges.
It will take in 25 miles from Interstate 4 near Sanford to State roads 429 and 441 at Apopka when fully opened in 2021.
That route crosses some of Florida’s most protected and most imperiled parklands, which buffer the spring-fed Wekiva River.
Much of the parkway is designed to lessen harm to bears, gopher tortoises and other animals, including with thousands of feet of wildlife underpasses. Nowhere is protecting the river’s environment more challenging than with the bridges crossing the Wekiva.
Prine noted that the bridges’ height will put cars nearly 60 feet over the Wekiva and above fogs that form along the river, while the 360-foot center spans will allow freer movement of wildlife beneath.
The bridges also will replace a bridge built in the early 1990s that carries the two-lane State Road 46 across the river.
That bridge is low, unsightly, topped by chainlink fence, mounted on pilings that sprout from the river and a source of staccato thumping from tires smacking pavement joints.
Construction of the new bridges will make use of the S.R. 46 bridge briefly, before it is dismantled, a job that will require care to not make a muddy mess as workers chop off pilings below the bed of the river.
Workers will then scrape away approaches for the S.R. 46 bridge and for the temporary construction access. The result will be a flood plain and river banks restored to natural contours.
Removal of the old bridge and the design of the new bridges are going to be “a very big plus for the health of the river,” Prine said.
The south span will carry a service road replacing S.R. 46, a path for cycling and walking and decks for outlooks.
The middle span will have a pair of eastbound lanes for the parkway, and the north span will carry a pair of westbound lanes. Both of those spans will have room for expansion to three lanes.
The surface of the concrete piers will have raised shapes of tree trunks and will be stained with an earth tone.
Among those waiting to see what emerges are Rick and Linda Roberts, who live just north of where the bridges will be built.
They are optimistic the project will turn out well, in part, because the National Park Service responded to public concerns the bridges were too close to homes and to trees.
“We thought the bridge would come over the top of our house,” Rick Roberts said.