Top Stories for Tuesday November 17, 2009

J. P. Carrara & Sons Open House Shows Impressive High-Tech Capacity for Making Longlasting Concrete
By Ed Barna
There they were: the 240-foot-long supports that will take the center of the new Cross Street bridge over Otter Creek.
    Visitors to the J. P. Carrara & Sons open house on Oct. 30 not only got a preview of five of the six prestressed, reinforced concrete sections that will be the backbone of the Cross Street span (480 feet in all, with four of them 120 feet long), they got an eye-opening look at a manufacturing operation many had no idea existed locally.
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This IS Your Great-Grandfather’s Cement
By Ed Barna
   On Monday, Nov. 9, the Champlain Bridge became a 1,284-foot white
elephant.
    So dangerous that pedestrians are not allowed to cross it, workers are not
allowed on it, and boat traffic has been forbidden beneath it, the 1929 structure is slated for demolition, as soon as unnamed experts recommend a way to do this without putting anyone on it to cut the steel girders. The closest thing to a living presence aboard the historic monument and regional icon is a set of electronic monitors, which will tell the New York State Department of Transportation (NYS-DOT) when a wind storm or floating ice or a snow load has begun the process of causing it to collapse.
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Counseling Service Celebrates 50 Years At Annual Meeting

The Counseling Service of Addison County celebrated its 50th birthday on Thursday, November 5 at the American Legion hall in Middlebury, with a strong attendance of more than 160 people. The event, which was also the Counseling Service’s annual meeting, featured speakers focusing on each of the five decades of  the agency’s history, beginning with Dottie Neuberger and Phyllis Severson, who spoke of the early years when the agency was located in the basement of the Middlebury Municipal Building. Other speakers included Rep. William Lippert, who worked at the Counseling Service for many years and was its Executive Director from 1985 to 1996.  [ more ]