POMFRET — A deteriorating town bridge whose weight limit was previously dropped from 36 tons to 3 has now been entirely closed to traffic for an “indeterminate” period due to substructure damage, officials said.
The 25-foot Taft Pond Road bridge, which up until July carried up to 360 vehicles a day across the Mashamoquet Brook, was closed on Friday by order of the state Department of Transportation in anticipation of a stop-gap rehab project designed to get the span back to some level of load-bearing capacity.
First Selectwoman Maureen Nicholson during a Monday Board of Selectman meeting said she watched crews last week attempt to put Jersey barriers on the bridge, built in 1900 and reconstructed in 1993, in anticipation of the traffic ban.