Quincy sues to block bridge to Long Island

The city of Quincy today moved its battle against a new Long Island Bridge into court, asking a judge to overturn the state's approval of Boston's proposed bridge reconstruction, which would let Boston rebuild the addiction-treatment facilities it used to run on the island.

Although Long Island is part of Boston, the  bridge connects with the mainland in Quincy. Boston shut the bridge in 2014 as unsafe and tore down the roadway in 2015. It has been trying since to rebuild the span and re-open Long Island as a public-health campus.

In its suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, Quincy argues the state Department of Environmental Protection approved a shoddy, cheap inspection and construction method that could mean the bridge could collapse - there's just no way to tell, Quincy alleges - and that Boston should be dealt with severely for, among other things, failing to register its plans with over the decades with the registries of deeds in two counties and failing to seek approval from MassDOT for the work.

And rising sea levels means the state should have considered new data on whether the bridge would remain safe for ships passing under it, but did not, Quincy charges.

In its complaint, Quincy charges that Boston's plan to reuse supports built for the original bridge in 1950 is flawed, in part because it performed "only limited testing on some (not all) of the concrete piers," which is alleges means there's no accurate measurement of potential damage from "decades-long alkali-silica reaction and freeze-thaw conditions resulting from saltwater inundation and exposure in the marine environment for over 70 years."

And then, Quincy continued, Boston wrangled state approval of a plan to make any repairs via "limpets," box-like structures that do not go below the mud line, where there might be even more lurking problems, rather than installing "coffer dams" around each support so that the piers can be fully exposed for detailed examinations that would show whether more extensive work might be needed.

Quincy charged that Boston failed to properly records its original 1950 construction with the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds and a 2015 state approval to re-do utility connections to the island with the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds.

For all these problems and more - the state wouldn't let Quincy use engineers licensed somewhere other than Massachusetts to provide expert testimony, for example - Quincy is asking a judge to rescind the approval and tell the state to do its job correctly this time.

Complete complaint - includes a copy of the state's approval (11.6M PDF).