Cape Cod business and nonprofit leaders took to the microphone at a public meeting Monday to show support for replacing the Bourne and Sagamore bridges at a cost of at least $4.5 billion.
Robert “Bert” Talerman, president of Cape Cod 5, said the idea of failing to replace the bridges keeps him up at night.
“A closure of either one of these bridges is just a complete economic disaster for this region, in ways and shapes that people can't even begin to imagine, that extends significantly beyond even the studies that have been done,” he said.
In opening remarks, state Sen. Dylan Fernandes, who has begun hosting quarterly updates on the project with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said a major rehabilitation of either bridge — which is due, for safety reasons, in the next several years — would involve completely shutting down the bridge for nine months, “and then the bridge going to one-lane traffic for two years after that.”
“So that can never happen,” he said.
Others spoke in support of the bridge project from the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, the Falmouth Chamber of Commerce, the Davenport Companies, and Heritage Museums and Gardens. And Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said witnesses in thousands of cases each year have to cross the bridges to get to court.
Owners of some of the 13 homes and a few local businesses that will be taken by eminent domain continue to speak out about how the loss will hurt them. Appraisal of homes has begun.
Joan Hendel, whose home in the Round Hill neighborhood by the Sagamore Bridge is slated to be taken, said residents are suffering not only the loss of their homes, but also the ongoing stress of relocating on an uncertain timeline.
She asked the state to provide mental health support for residents, “because each one of us that live in Round Hill, when your team comes out with their cars, and they stand on our driveways with seven people doing appraisals, it puts us over the edge. And unless you've been there, you don't understand.”
She and others asked for a more specific timeline of when they’ll have to leave.
In response, a DOT official said the state’s obligation to make homeowners whole — by finding a comparable home — takes time. But homeowners can also take the money from their home and move elsewhere if they choose.
Each property receives two appraisals, followed by an appraisal review, said John DeLeire, director of DOT’s Right-of-Way Bureau. He said if the compensation for the property exceeds $300,000, it has to go before a review board appointed by the governor’s office.
The state’s head of the project, Luisa Paiewonsky, executive director of megaproject delivery at DOT, gave a presentation with updates about exploratory soil boring around both bridges, property acquisition, and other aspects of the work.
She said the state recently requested, and promptly received, a disbursement of $36 million in federal money from the much larger pot of more than $1 billion in federal funds already committed to the bridge project.
Receiving the money in stages is normal, she said.
“We have heard not a word of concern from the federal government about pulling those funds back,” she said. “They’ve been very supportive.”
That has not been the case for all transportation projects in Massachusetts. Word arrived last week that the Trump administration is rescinding nearly all of a $335 million grant to replace the I-90 viaduct in Boston’s Allston neighborhood.
That money came from a different federal source than the Cape bridge funds.
Paiewonsky said the Allston project was funded by an equity-related grant designed to redress decisions made decades ago to run highways through low-income and disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Back on the Cape, the Sagamore Bridge is fully funded, but the state is still seeking federal funding for the Bourne Bridge.
