The other day, on a beautiful morning, a friend and I took a boat ride under the Chautauqua Lake Bridge. There was a lot to see.

A bridge is a bit like an iceberg in that there is much more of it below the road surface than above it. That means that much of the construction work is also more visible underneath, from down below.

What hits you immediately from the water level is how massive the under-decking is that was built to protect workers as well as keep construction debris out of the lake. (It had to be expensive to build.) It hangs below the bridge supported by steel rods from above. It also has lowered the distance from the waterline to the highest arch of the bridge from about 42 feet to some 34 feet.

Since this structure is already built, it would be nice if somehow it could be converted into a bikeway/walkway. But, it appears, from its design, that this is probably not possible.

The day we were there, jack-up barges were nestled up to a couple of the supporting columns of the bridge and moveable basket cranes (the kind that you see on roof jobs or when painting tall houses) were placed on top of them. Men were in the baskets with airguns cutting out bad concrete soiled by years of wear from salt used to treat the road in the winter.

New forms had been built in places to replace this old, deteriorated concrete, and one must guess that recent night closures may have been related to the pouring of new concrete in these areas as well as in patching pavement on the open lanes above.

What impresses you most from beneath, at the water level, is the realization of just how much human work goes into a bridge repair job of this magnitude. Workers have to do this dirty, physical, hard, manual work. There is no other way that it can be done. My hat goes off to those now working on the bridge.

When you look up toward the bridge deck from the water level, you also see what, in the Navy, we called “scuppers”–downspouts that discharge rain water, snow melt and the salt that comes with it to the lake below.

Then it hit me that instead of repairing these downspouts–perhaps a bikeway/walkway on each side of the bridge could be designed to divert these liquids in the winter. These structures would carry pedestrians and bikes in the summer, but, when snow starts falling and the slush accumulates, they would catch the plowed snow with the salt and, when it melts, divert it to the shores of the lake to be contained there for proper disposal.

Could this improve things environmentally as well as provide public pedestrian access while, at the same time, reduce corrosion to the bridge? (DOT…we may have a win-win possibility here!) At least, it may be something to consider if the Village of Bemus Point is successful in receiving the grant for which it has applied to assess the feasibility of such a project.

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.