A draft environmental report on the Cape Cod bridges replacement project is now available for public viewing, and state transportation officials held an open house Thursday in Bourne to solicit comments and answer questions.
Area residents walked through the Veterans’ Memorial Community Center gym, looking at renderings of the bridges, their locations, the layout of nearby roads, and information from the environmental report.
How the new road layout will handle local traffic was one question that brought out husband and wife Louis and Carmen Cremonini, who live near the Sagamore Bridge on the mainland side.
“We're just worried about the infrastructure, the roads getting to it and everything, how we're going to navigate that,” he said.
His wife said she’s glad the bridges are being replaced. “Hopefully, you know, it lasts for another hundred years,” she said.
The environmental report covers how the bridges and their construction will affect the world around them, including protected species, greenhouse gas emissions, noise, air quality, and the socioeconomics of the region.
Overall, the effect on the environment will be fairly light, said Luisa Paiewonsky, head of the $4.5 billion project for the Healey administration. She is executive director of the Megaprojects Delivery Office in the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
The report says the bridge construction could kill monarch butterflies and eliminate some of their habitat, but will not jeopardize the species as a whole.
Building the bridges is not likely to harm critical habitat for endangered North Atlantic right whales, nor will it have a significant effect on fish or shellfish in the Cape Cod Canal, according to the report.
As for air pollution, the report indicates that exhaust emissions in the immediate area of the bridges will be reduced.
That’s because easing traffic congestion will cut the time vehicles spend idling, Paiewonsky said.
“The most significant factor in the reduced emissions of air pollution is the reduced congestion,” she said. “And that involves making the bridges more functional, but also making the interchanges more functional, because they're contributors as well.”
Bourne resident John Flynn, who lives near the Bourne Bridge on the Cape side, said he believes the bridges need to be replaced.
“They're deathtraps,” he said. “I mean, I almost shiver every time I go over it, believe me. And I watch people coming over [at] 60, 70 miles an hour … and they have bad accidents there, when they do have an accident.”
A 2020 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the bridges, showed the Sagamore Bridge was due for major rehabilitation in 2025 and the Bourne Bridge in 2029.
The state is accepting public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report through Oct. 24.
A similar report must be submitted at the federal level. Finalizing those reports is a key component of the bridges’ permitting process. Once permitting is complete, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation can hire a design-build team (often two contractors working together) and finish the design for the first bridge, the Sagamore.
The Bourne Bridge has yet to receive major federal funding. Paiewonsky said the state applied Aug. 1 for more than $1 billion in grants.
She said she expects notice of an award won’t arrive until later in the fall, “but we're definitely keeping an eye on the mail.”
