Vermilion River Bridge Construction Underway

Vermilion River Bridge Construction Underway

Michelle Pinon - News Advertiser

Carmacks Enterprises Ltd. is the contractor for the Alberta Government’s $3.5 million project to demolish and replace the Highway 16A Bridge over the Vermilion River in the Town of Vegreville.

Work officially began on March 26 and is expected to be completed on October 15, 2021.

Bridge Division Manager Stephen King, said the job is going well. “It’s an exciting job for Vegreville, for sure.” The project is divided in two phases with the first being the demolition of the existing bridge, build a new bridge, and then do the final connections of the existing roadway to the bridge. Pretty straight forward project that way.

We started in early March. We did some work in the channel to protect the river from erosion so we did some work while there was still ice on the river. And so now, we’re in the process of demolishing one half of the bridge keeping traffic one lane in each direction and then we’ll build a new structure where the old one was and then repeat on the other half so you wind up with a new bridge when it’s all said and done.

To us it was the right option to build it in two phases rather than building a deep detour to go around it. It is going to take us a little longer because we are doing it in two phases but I think it’s pretty much the same level of disruption doing it the way we are doing it.