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I-5 bridge work goes into high gear- The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA Page 1 of 3 www.registerguard.com I ©The Register-Guard, Eugene,Oregon i 1'11110' October 13, 2003 I-5 bridge work goes into high gear By Bill Bishop The Register-Guard Like a construction video on fast-forward, local motorists will see detour bridges go up on Interstate 5 over the Willamette and McKenzie rivers in the next year as transportation officials scramble to return heavy-haul trucking to the state's main north-south freeway. Crews working for Hamilton Construction Co., a longtime Springfield-based bridge builder, have begun work on a temporary bridge over the Willamette and are aiming to finish detour bridges over both rivers by Sept. 5 next year, said Jeff Payne, Oregon Department of Transportation project manager. It should be quite a show, he I said. Public tours of the projects will be held on the first Thursday of each month. "We're going to do four years of work in one," he says. "There is nothing complex about the structure. It's the length of it. It is one of the longest structures in Oregon. The crossings of the Columbia River are about the only things that top it." Because the Willamette detour 691114 bridge requires 56 pilings - most of them drilled and poured into —J�-- bedrock beneath the river - crews will have to take special _ v steps to guard against pollution as the holes are drilled and filled with reinforced concrete for support pillars that are 7 feet in diameter. Jack Young, a pile buck supervisor, Crews probably will work 12- guides a pile driver with a rope as hour days Mondaythroughcrews prepare to build an I-5 detour y bridge over the Willamette River. Friday and 10 hours on Saturdays. About 300 Photos: Thomas Boyd /The truckloads of fill dirt will arrive Register-Guard http://www.registerguard.com/cgi-bin/printStory.py?name=a 1.bridges.1013&date=20031013 10/17/03