Where is the Old Tappan Zee Bridge Going?

Old Tappan Zee Bridge Begins Its New Life

On a redevelopment site in Perth Amboy, N.J., crews are repurposing a piece of history. The job: break down pieces of the old Tappan Zee Bridge to build up a 35-acre site situated on the banks of Arthur Kill, which flows into the Raritan Bay.

From article, (On a redevelopment site in Perth Amboy, N.J., crews are repurposing a piece of history. The job: break down pieces of the old Tappan Zee Bridge to build up a 35-acre site situated on the banks of Arthur Kill, which flows into the Raritan Bay.

The site is located on a flood plain, and before it can be repurposed, it needs to be built up between four and eight feet, said Jason Burke, owner of Burke Construction of Ocean, N.J., who has been contracted to spread imported fill across the property. His crew of 12 will be using “every single piece of concrete” available from the dismantled bridge to make it happen.

“The bridge is 180,000 tons and it's not even enough to do a quarter of the property,” said Burke.

 The enormous pieces of the Tappan Zee arrive at the site on barges from Tarrytown, N.Y., where a 1,000-ton barge crane picks them off and crews get to work on the concrete with the Nye pulverizer. Then, the concrete is put through a crusher to “crush it down to 6-in.-minus specs so it can be used as stabilizing [material] on the site,” said Burke, who noted that the pulverizer does about “90 percent of the work,” which makes the job of the crusher “minimal.”

According to Burke, breaking apart one of the bridge's precast 50-ft.-long by 13-ft.-wide deck panels, which are lined with I-beams along the bottom and the deck on the top, takes about an hour with four hammers working simultaneously. It might not seem like a lot of time, but Burke said he anticipates about 2,000 of these panels coming in — and once the crew finishes with those, the bridge's columns, struts, fender pieces and concrete-filled steel piles will arrive. In all, Burke said his crew will handle between 150,000 and 200,000 tons of material.

 As they crush and pulverize the concrete, crews also shear and separate the steel and bundle the rebar before sending it to a recycling plant. From there, the scraps could find new purpose in another piece of infrastructure.)

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