Two fifths of the Old Sligo Bridge is now gone.
A portion of the bridge on the Smithville side was demolished late Tuesday afternoon. The rest of the bridge remains standing but will soon come down as well.
“They are shooting it up in pieces and when it falls in the water then they have to retrieve it out. They will put the pieces on barges and ship it out for waste or scrap metal,” said Larry Langford, Operations Technician for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
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A portion of the concrete piers supporting the old bridge will also be removed. “They will shoot the piers down into the water but not all the way to the bottom of the lake. The Corps will do a final sonar of the bottom of the lake and anything (piers) that is above elevation 600 feet (mean sea level) has to be removed so the concrete piers will actually remain in the water. They won’t shoot them out all the way to the bottom of the lake,” Langford said.