Brunswick County motorists could be driving over two new high rise bridges this fall.
The new Oak Island and Sunset Beach bridges are expected to be completed about the same time, giving motorists easier access to the barrier islands.
Oak Island's new bridge is scheduled to be done in September, nine months later than expected because of a fatal accident December 2008 and an issue with cracks in some beams.
All of the beams are set over the 65-foot-tall Sunset Beach bridge, and workers are beginning to pour the decks, N.C. Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Wayne Currie said.
Workers are still setting the beams, or girders, over the waterway in Oak Island and then plan to move to pouring the deck.
The old Sunset Beach single-lane, wooden pontoon bridge is expected to be removed by December.
The bridges haven't been named yet, but Oak Island has decided to name the corridor leading up to the new bridge E.F. Middleton Boulevard, Oak Island spokesman Kyle Thomas said.
The town took suggestions from the public for naming the corridor last summer, and the council settled on E.F. Middleton, Thomas said.
Ernest Felder Middleton, a timber exporter from Charleston, developed part of Oak Island in the late 1930s.
The corridor that will now bear his name runs from Middleton Avenue on the south side of Oak Island Drive to the intersection of Midway Road and N.C. 211.
Although the Oak Island bridge was supposed to be completed a year before the Sunset Beach bridge project's completion at the end of this year, several delays have stalled the project.
In December 2008, a concrete girder fell during bridge construction, killing one man, injuring two others and delaying the project significantly.
Work resumed in May 2009, only to be halted from June to October because the DOT twice rejected pre-set, pre-cast girders because of cracks it deemed unacceptable.
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