BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1019 Report
The Île aux Tourtes Bridge will be closed in both directions again this coming weekend.
The span will close completely in both directions at midnight the night of Friday, Sept. 20, and reopen in the early morning hours of Monday, Sept. 23.
This is the second full-weekend closure of the bridge so far this month. The span was closed two weekends ago, from Friday, Sept. 6, to Monday, Sept. 9.
The closures are deemed necessary to advance work in the installation of steel structures under a portion of the east end of the bridge. These structures are designed to provide additional support to the span.
To accommodate this phase of the work, crews will be extending two jetties into the lake from the eastern shores in Senneville. These jetties have been serving as work areas, allowing workers to install piles. The new steel structures will eventually rest on the piles and provide additional support for the old bridge’s main beams.
Once the steel structures are in place, Transport Quebec said it may be able to open more lanes across the span. No timeline for that, however, has been put forward.
Earlier this summer, work to build the jetties forced Transport Quebec to bring in a team of biologists to relocated more than 33,000 freshwater mussels from the site. It is believed that this move is a first for a construction site in the province given its scope.
The mussels that inhabit the floor of the Lake of Two Mountains were deemed to be at risk of being crushed by the construction of the jetties.
The mussels, which can live up to 30 years, are considered an endangered species that mature slowly, thus making them slower to reproduce. If the mussels had not been moved, biologists believe it would have taken decades for the population in the lake to recover.
The mussels were moved to another areas in the lake, away from the construction zone.
Transport Quebec has committed that the mussels in the Lake of Two Mountains will be observed until 2026 to ensure their survival.
Since the beginning of 2024, the bridge has seen five complete closures in both directions, including the weekend shutdown two weeks ago.