DUXBURY — Oct. 26, 2026 — The Duxbury Selectboard on Monday kept a single property tax rate for fiscal 2027, then heard a Powder Point Bridge update in which a MassDOT official said replacement is the only option the agency can fund and asked the town to say before late March whether it wants the project stopped. The board took no bridge vote.
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Powder Point Bridge. The discussion was not a construction approval or appropriation. A MassDOT official, Marco Pereira, said that from the agency’s perspective, replacement is the only alternative. The agency’s maintenance estimate put the equivalent annual cost at approximately $66,000 a year over 50 years and $222,000 over 100 years.
Pereira said the design is at the 25% stage and that, even if the bridge were found historic, MassDOT would not be obliged to rehabilitate it given its condition. The town’s deadline to stop the project is roughly late March, before the job is advertised to contractors, he said. The current best case is a four-and-a-half-year project, which he said could be three and a half years only without environmental limits.
Asked whether a look-alike wooden bridge could get federal money, Pereira said it could not. On the repair approach promoted by timber engineer Dan Tingley, he said MassDOT found nothing wrong with the repairs, but a hydraulic analysis found the shallow piers subject to scour and the structure not resilient against projected sea level rise.
We cannot spend money on that. We cannot. That does not mean you cannot.
— Marco Pereira, P.E., Supervising Project Manager, Major Projects, MassDOT – Highway Division 2:20:49
Pereira said delays not tied to historic review would put this year’s funding at risk and require reprogramming through the Metropolitan Planning Organization, where the project would compete with others.
Residents push back. Derek Bennett with Save Powder Point Bridge, Inc. called the replacement a nearly $200 million project and asked who authorized pursuing replacement over rehabilitation, and at what public meeting. He also asked who had independently evaluated the town’s long-term financial exposure.
Sheila Lynch-Benttinen asked for a hybrid design with concrete and steel piers and a wooden top, and said a congressional office had said a state bridge engineer could not set a funding deadline. The MassDOT official said the regional planning organization and colleagues had confirmed the understanding that unobligated federal funds get reprogrammed, and asked for the question in writing. Peter Dalton from the Shellfish Advisory Committee said Duxbury Bay produced $8 million in oysters and that growers fear construction silt and lost business.
