Traffic over Harpswell’s Ewing Narrows Bridge, on Mountain Road, will be reduced to one lane starting Monday, July 28, as the Maine Department of Transportation begins the second phase of a $3 million repair project started in 2024.
Simone Zimmerman, a Department of Transportation project manager for bridge repairs, said the work will include a total repaving and other “minor repairs as needed,” along with some drain modifications and joint work.
Flaggers and temporary signals will maintain a single lane of traffic, alternating between directions, Zimmerman said.
The lane closure could last up to three months. Zimmerman said the repair contract requires a completion date of no later than Nov. 1, but she doesn’t expect the work to take that long.
“We don’t anticipate this project taking the entire window of time,” she said. “Weather and the extent of repair work that the deck ends up needing will dictate how quickly the contractor is finished.”
The Department of Transportation’s 2024 work plan included $3 million to paint and repave the bridge. The work plan estimated the cost to paint the bridge at $1.6 million and the cost for “wearing surface replacement” at $1.4 million.
The contractor on the repaving project is CPM Constructors, of Freeport. The contract amount is about $734,000.
Last summer, the bridge was covered in tarps for the project’s first phase, which included stripping and repainting. The tarps allowed the repair crew to collect falling debris as well as “shot blast” — small, reusable metal beads used to strip the paint.
The Ewing Narrows Bridge opened in summer 1976 to connect Harpswell Neck to Sebascodegan Island and, by extension, Orr’s and Bailey islands. Before then, motorists on the islands or the Neck had to drive through Brunswick to reach the other side of Harpswell.
