The use of an out-of-state contractor to blow the Crown Point bridge leads to complaints.
The dust has barely settled and hundreds of tonnes of debris still remain in the icy depths of Lake Champlain following the recent implosion of the Crown Point bridge, but already the repercussions have begun.
Edward Malloy, president of the New York State Building & Construction Trades Council, blasted the Paterson administration for hiring an out-of-state demolition company to blow up the Crown Point Bridge.
“Perhaps your commissioner is unaware that there are capable men and women who live and pay taxes right here in New York state who want and need to work on this project,” Malloy wrote in his Dec. 21 letter to Gov. David Paterson and copied to Acting Transportation Commissioner Stanley Gee.
Malloy called the awarding of the blasting work to an Idaho company “unconscionable” considering the high unemployment rate upstate for union laborers.
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But the post-blowdown repercussions don’t end there.
Lisa Kelly and her husband, Eric, – the two-person team behind the blowdown – had nothing but kind words for the Vermont officials she dealt with during their Christmas-season bridge job. But the Kellys are scratching their heads about the Empire State’s representatives.
As Kelly tells it, AED had begun laying dynamite when she got a Christmas call saying she needed to immediately come up with a certified check for $13,028 to pay for workers’ compensation insurance.
She said her firm, which has little overhead, doesn’t need the coverage since it’s a husband-and-wife operation. But in New York, Kelly was told, she needed it. “I said I did not have the funds,” she said. As the state pressed, the general contractor that hired AED picked up the cost. A policy was quickly put together by the New York State Insurance Fund with an effective date of Dec. 28, the day AED blew up the bridge.
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