New year brings more focus to new construction on bridge replacement project at Lansing
Final steel sections of Black Hawk Bridge removed from river ... Crews from Kraemer North America lift one of the final pieces of the steel structure of the Black Hawk Bridge out of the Mississippi River just after the new year got underway last week. With the steel structure now being completely removed from the river following the December 19 demolition of the Black Hawk Bridge that dropped those steel components into the river, the project focus has turned toward installing the shoring towers to help facilitate the beginning of the steel construction of the new bridge on the Wisconsin side of the river, in addition to removal of the old concrete piers of the Black Hawk Bridge (visible in the center of the photo background above) and the remaining steel truss and concrete pier on the Iowa side riverbank. Photo courtesy of the Iowa Department of Transportation.
The new year has brought a new focus to the construction of the new bridge that will span the Mississippi River at Lansing, planned for completion in 2027 to once again fully connect Iowa with Wisconsin. That new focus will now be much more on new construction, with some smaller demolition and dismantling yet remaining on the remnants of the Black Hawk Bridge that had originally provided that connection over the past nine-plus decades.
Bridge project manager Clayton Burke, District Engineer with the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT), says the final pieces of the steel structure of the Black Hawk Bridge that had been dropped into the waters that it once spanned during its December 19 demolition were removed from the Mississippi River early in the first full week of this new year. He said with that steel structure now removed from the river - and that process progressing quicker than originally planned, the focus for the project can now turn more toward new construction, specifically the installation of the shoring towers near the new concrete piers to help facilitate the placement of steel on the Wisconsin side of the bridge.
“All the steel pieces of the old bridge have been removed from the river, and we have just a small pile of that left to process on land and get shipped out,” Burke shared. “That process went faster than originally thought, the weather really cooperated with that process, so now we can turn our focus toward the next big step, installing the shoring towers near the piers on the Wisconsin side so that the steel can start to go up on that side of the river.”
It was the underwater boring for those shoring towers that ultimately forced the early closure and demolition of the Black Hawk Bridge, as the vibrations from that process were causing detected movement in the old bridge beyond what project officials deemed safe, both for traveling on the bridge and for those working next to it. Burke said that process can now proceed without that safety risk further looming.
Meanwhile, steel work continues on the Iowa side of the project after a holiday break for the ironworkers involved in that part of the project. Burke says that workers are on “step 50 out of 200” steps that comprise construction of the steel truss on the Iowa side.
He noted that once that “step 200” is reached, the project focus will shift considerably to steel work on the Wisconsin side of the river.
While that new construction focus is more fully renewed, there remains some continued demolition tasks to remove what little does remain of the Black Hawk Bridge, tasks that can now more easily be accomplished alongside the new construction process. The remaining steel structure of the bridge on the Iowa riverbank that could not be demolished due to its location over the railroad and city streets will need to be disassembled manually, a process that is currently going through a required permitting process before it can proceed.
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