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Suffolk City Council unanimously approved an ordinance for repairing the Speights Spillway Bridge during their Wednesday, Sept. 18 council meeting at City Hall.

The project aims to rehabilitate and provide a superstructure replacement for a deficient bridge over the spillway of Lake Speight into Lake Kilby along Turlington Rd. Alongside substructure repairs being made, the original deck will be removed with a new deck and guardrail system being installed. Likewise, the original roadway alignment and width will also be maintained. Director of Public Works Robert Lewis gave more details during his presentation.

“As a part of reviewing this, we’ve determined that we can actually get for the best bang for our buck, we’re going to go in there and close the road down and we’re going to take the entire superstructure off of that bridge and built an entirely new superstructure on top of it…,” Lewis said.

The current estimate for construction is $836,000 with the project duration estimated for 180 days and requiring a full closure and detour. Lewis also noted Public Works working with the City of Portsmouth.

“Portsmouth has got some work they need to do to that dam and there is a probably in the not too distant future, they may actually rework that entire spillway structure,” Lewis said. “But until then, we’ve got a bridge that’s substandard with weight restrictions on it.”