HACKENSACK – A bridge contractor tasked with rehabilitating a century-old bridge in Oradell claims it incurred damages when Bergen County delayed the project for months to protect a threatened heron species in 2012, according to a Superior Court lawsuit.

The suit, filed Tuesday, alleges that the county owes ConQuest industries of Westwood more than $400,000 in unpaid expenses as a result of the delay and other design-related problems that were not disclosed prior to construction and prolonged the renovation more than two years.

“When the project is supposed to be completed in one construction season, which is 120 days, and then it’s extended to two-plus years, your costs are completely blown out of the water,” Nicholas Zaita, an attorney for the developer, said Friday.

ConQuest was hired by the county in 2012 as part of a $1 million rehabilitation of the Elm Street Bridge – Bergen County’s third-oldest bridge – which dates back to 1892 and spans the Hackensack River into New Milford.

The project was scheduled to take three months, but endured multiple setbacks that began in April 2012 with the sighting of black-crowned night herons near the river banks, according to the suit.

County officials halted construction until breeding season for the state-protected bird ended in July 2012. Prior to the delay, ConQuest allegedly devoted resources to the project that could have been used elsewhere had the county given a more accurate construction timeline, according to Zaita.

“We didn’t anticipate any of those issues,” he said. “ConQuest’s position is that the county should have.”

More:NJ is fixing, or plans to fix, the state's oldest and busiest bridges

Don Torino, President of the Bergen County Audubon Society, said the Hackensack River and Meadowlands are important nesting sites for black-crowned night herons, a bird native to the Atlantic coast and southern Canada.

The New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife lists the bird as a threatened species.

“They’re threatened due to loss of habit, us building everywhere indiscriminately,” Torino said. “They’re also compromised by polluted water systems.”

For decades the bridge's beams below its decking had slowly deteriorated from wear and flooding. Along with restoring the original iron work, the project sought to widen the 76-foot-long bridge by about 2 feet and increase the weight limit to meet federal standards for bus and commercial vehicle traffic.

But Superstorm Sandy, which caused widespread flooding in October 2012, stalled progress further, Zaita said. And, according to the suit, it soon became apparent that “the bridge structure could not support the new rehabilitation as it had been designed.”

The discovery called for last minute redesigns of beams and structural supports, which forced more delays and required more work from Conquest, the suit states.

Officials from the county did not respond for comment.

An April report by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association ranked New Jersey 23rd in the country for percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

More than 544 of the state's 6,746 bridges are classified as structurally deficient, according to the report.

The state has identified necessary repairs on 2,305 bridges, the report said. Those repairs would cost an estimated $7 billion.

The Elm Street Bridge is one of many Bergen County bridges built at the turn of the 19th century.



