Out of service 14 times since May, Placentia's lift bridge is depressing harvesters: FFAW

The Fish, Food &Allied Workers unionhas grownfrustrated with the Sir Ambrose Shea Bridge in Placentiaand says it's making it harder for fish harvesters to do their jobs.

The vertical lift is one of the only bridges of its kind in the country.It opened in 2016 and cost the province nearly $50 million.

Dwan Street, inshore staff representative with the FFAW,says the bridge is not working as it was intended for harvesters.

"We always start getting complaints from harvesters that they're unable to leave port. Harvesters get stuck outside, unable to come in and land," she told CBC News in a recent interview.

When the bridge isn't working, people in vehiclescantake a detour to get between Placentia and Jerseyside.

But for those travelling by boat, things get more complicated.

"It's not abnormal for me to get probably an email every day or two that something has gone wrong and there's a contractor on the way," Street said.

"Of course, contractors have to come from out of town. I've seen it take a day, I've seen it take weeks for contractors to arrive. It seems like getting parts for the bridge takes quite a bit of time."

Street says harvesters often get stuck, and sometimesthey have to make tough decisions that impact their safetyand their finances.

"I had a harvester contact me and she was stuck outside. She was bringing in her catch, she had bait on board. The weather was deteriorating. Essentially she had to make a choice of taking a chance that she was going to be able to get under the bridge, or be stuck out in bad weather, losing the catch, losing the bait."

'No surprises'

John Abbott, provincial minister of transportation and infrastructure, said the bridge's functionality isn't as poor as it might seem.

"Over the past six months the bridge lifts component has been used 848 times," he said. "We only had 14 incidents where it wasn't working the way it should, which is roughly just over one per cent."

According to government documents obtained through access-to-information requests, someof those incidents since May lasted longer than 24 hours. Maintenance isdone with the bridge in its lowered positionso vehicles can continue driving, but boats cannot pass underneath.

The internal documents also show some fish harvesters were forced to offload their catch in St. Bride's,49 kilometres away.

The provincial government looked into whether harvesters could land their catch at the nearby Port of Argentiawhen the bridge is out of service, but the port authority said there was no space.

Abbott said the government is committed to monitoring the bridge, troubleshootingand doing preventive maintenance.

He said protocols are in place for the benefit of harvesters and for the safety for those who depend on the bridge for driving.

"At the local level, we have our supervisors there and an operator for the bridge who's on site," Abbott said.

"They make sure that if there are any issues with the bridge, that's communicated in real time so that users, whether it's the fire service, the ambulance service, as well as the FFAW and others, are notified right away what is happening so there are no surprises."

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