A colony of flying foxes has disbanded work on Clarence Town’s dilapidated Brig O'Johnston Bridge until May after the threatened species was found nesting under it.
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The NSW Roads and Maritime Services said work on the heritage-listed structure had to stop under its biodiversity guidelines and work will not resume until breeding season finishes in five months time.
That means work on the northern side of the bridge deck cannot continue.
A spokesman said the RMS was working with an ecologist who was governing its approach.
Residents cannot believe the bat colony has stopped the work while scaffolding still dominates the bridge.
Motorists said the safety of the heritage-listed structure was their priority.
Clarence Town Progress Association president Brian Farmer, who has a construction background, said he’d never heard of it.
“With all the banging and hammering you would have thought the bats would be scared off,” he said.
Mr Farmer said the bridge was not safe. He said it had fallen into disrepair after years of neglect and two trucks had a wheel swallowed in the deck in January, which prompted the RMS’ urgent repairs.
“The bridge is not safe, it’s not standing up on its own yet,” Mr Farmer said.
“The repair work that they’re doing has not finished and they haven’t left the site in a particularly safe way either.”
The spokesman said routine maintenance work on the timber truss spans and existing bailey support system started in August had already finished. He said the delayed work was also part of the routine maintenance schedule.
The bridge’s long-term future is still in limbo.
Fairfax Media revealed the decay of the bridge two years ago.
At that point the support beams and trusses were decaying, or rotted, and daylight was visible through them.
There was a hole in the deck that had been covered with a steel plate, the abutments and timber piers moved, and pedestrians could feel vibrations when they drove over it.
The RMS released a $14 million plan in 2014 to build a new bridge where the existing bridge stands.Work was expected to begin last year but heritage concerns stopped it.
The RMS said it was still working with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
The RMS told the Clarence Town Progress Association earlier this year that action needed to be taken.
He said the goal was to have rehabilitation work on the bridge approved.
Once that happened the environmental assessment would be done and the community would be consulted.
Check out the bats causing havoc across the region below.