BANGOR, Maine — After five weeks of hard work, a new wire retaining gabion wall was completed along a portion of the Kenduskeag Stream in Bangor.
In November 2020, the City of Bangor was notified there were pieces of the retaining wall along the stream that was tumbling into the river and were concerning citizens.
City Engineer John Theriault said the big issue was a major sewer line ran along the banks of the stream, so repair work needed to be done as quickly as possible.
Theriault said they needed to get permitting through the Maine Department of Transportation and AmeriCorps. When the permitting fell into place, it was mid-December, the stream had iced up, and work had to be postponed to spring 2021.
While the repair work was happening, workers had to wait for the stream to be at its lowest tide level to do the work each afternoon for about five to six weeks.
Contractor Lou Silver Company did the wall repair.
"What they did is they placed a new gabion wall in front of the old segmental concrete wall that was failing, so to basically provide support for the bank here. So it's about 100 feet, and it ties into another existing gabion wall further downstream," Theriault said.
Theriault said there will be an assessment done to the rest of the wall along the stream to find other areas of concern that need repair, but added, no other repair areas are as urgent to fix.
"We will put out a request of proposals for structural engineers to kind of do an assessment of the walls downtown so we can fund the areas that are most probable for concern," Theriault said.