Essa responds to Canada-wide bridge report
By Richard Blanchard

Essa township is vigilant on maintaining its bridges after a study was released last week which said that Canadian municipalities face a major deficit in infrastructure expenditure.

Township Public Works manager Greg Murphy said Wednesday night that the township is constantly monitoring its bridges to ensure their safety.

"We have our engineers undertake structural inspections of the bridges every two years and our road foremen do visual inspections of them on a regular basis," said Murphy. "We went a step further this year and identified four bridges for further inspection and had their concrete road surfaces checked., There were no problems."

Murphy said that the township has embarked on number of major projects in recent years to ensure that the township bridges are kept to the highest level.

"We have made major improvements to the fifth line bridge north of the 30th sideroad and we are presently replacing the Nicolston bridge on the fifth line."

Councillor Rick Newlove also noted that the county was planning to replace the Drysdale bridge on County Road 56.

Township mayor Dave Guergis said that the township has been helped with the provincial and federal infrastructure programs over the past several years.

"Bridge construction is not cheap. We can always use some help from the higher level of governments," he said.