Skinners Falls Bridge Does NOT Need More than a 10-Ton Limit
May 15, 2021
National Park Service Comments on the Skinners Falls Bridge
June 17, 2021
Greenworks is an environmental law firm representing DCS in the matter of PennDOT’s proposed Skinners Falls Bridge project. They submitted comprehensive comments to PennDOT on this matter, including supporting letters from the National Park Service, the Upper Delaware Council, the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway and Bach Steel. Excerpts from the comment are shown below.
Want to help? Be on the lookout for “The Ed Wesely Fund for the Bridge”.
Sadly, Ed Wesely passed away on May 26, 2021. You can read a bit about his life in this article from the River Reporter.
“DCS is deeply opposed to any PennDOT proposal to destroy the historic landmark bridge to replace it with a new bridge with a weight limit and lane capacity not shown to be needed in the area, whose historic and landmark beauty it would disrupt and degrade. Likewise, DCS has serious concerns about the present process that PennDOT is using to collect information in its “Planning and Environmental Linkages (PEL) Study,” a “study” that appears to be aimed at shaping the process to get to a predetermined endpoint of Bridge destruction and replacement, rather than analyzing required environmental, historical, scenic, ecological, and heritage aspects in necessary alternatives analyses and decision-making processes. A proper analysis of all the aforementioned factors, combined with public sentiment, overwhelmingly points to Bridge restoration and rehabilitation and the maintenance of the Bridge’s important linkages to the region’s history and environment.”
Read the full comments here. In conclusion:
“DCS wants to ensure that the destruction that happened to the historic Pond Eddy Bridge does not occur again. After an over twenty-year fight, the river community lost that bridge to PennDOT’s replacement bridge, which bears little resemblance to the graceful, historic structure that had stood in its place for decades. The Milanville Bridge is an integral part of the town of Milanville and its historic district. Destruction of the Bridge will forever alter the town, degrade its historic nature, and eliminate the “natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values” that the Bridge contributes to the local environment. Pa. Const., art. I, § 27. As a Pennsylvania agency, PennDOT has a constitutional obligation to “preserv[e]” those values. Id. Destruction of the Bridge would directly violate those duties, and would be even more egregious in light of the present lack of any demonstrable need for bridge replacement, and the opinion of bridge restoration experts that the Bridge is fully restorable.”
“We strongly encourage PennDOT to focus on restoration and rehabilitation of the Bridge so it may last for generations to come and to eliminate from consideration any project that entails destruction of the Bridge in any capacity.”
