The Batchellerville Bridge
The Batchellerville Bridge crosses the 26-mile-long Great Sacandaga Lake (formerly called Sacandaga Reservoir) at about its midpoint, at the town of Edinburg. Built in 1930, the year the Sacandaga River was dammed to create the reservoir, the bridge is said to be reaching the end of its useful life. It was designed for a weight limit of 15 tons, which it can still handle. Heavier vehicles (such as log-hauling trucks) have to make a trip north across the Conklinville Dam to reach the other side. (However, as one observer has pointed out, the bridge must actually have a weight limit of 30 tons, since two 15-ton trucks, simultaneously driving onto opposite ends of the bridge, would have to pass one another somewhere along its length.)
The bridge is low and essentially flat, and harmonizes well with its environment. It is about 3,100 feet (roughly six-tenths of a mile) long. When the lake/reservoir is "full," which the Hudson River-Black River Regulating District defines as 768 feet above sea level, the bridge's deck is 32 feet above the water. At that water level, the bridge has a vertical clearance of 15 feet for boats. Because the lake/reservoir was created to control flooding along the upper Hudson River and to provide hydropower, the water level is highest after the snow melts in the spring, after which it slowly declines.
The Batchellerville Bridge has two ten-foot-wide traffic lanes and two three-foot-wide shoulders. Because the shoulders are narrow and unprotected, the existing bridge sees very little foot traffic - although the view from the structure is superb. Including the railing, the bridge is 28 feet wide.
If the existing bridge were replaced with a structure of the same height (32 feet), the new bridge would offer a vertical clearance of 24 feet for boats - a gain of nine feet. That's because bridges built with modern construction techniques and materials require a less-extensive supporting structure underneath.
According to the state Department of Transportation, the existing bridge is in no imminent danger of becoming unsafe for regular traffic. Nor does DOT have an estimate of when that might occur. However, preparing for the inevitable, DOT is planning to replace the structure in the year 2004 at a cost of $35.7 million.
