As the water rises and falls on the Mississippi River, Moline is helping a bridge contractor deal with the flooding.
When the river is high, the current is faster and stronger.
That causes problems for Lunda Construction, which works from barges in the middle of the river. (Click below to listen to the radio story with Benjamin Payne.)
The city wants to help the company accelerate the process and keep up with the bridge construction schedule as much as possible.
Public Works Director, J.D. Schulte, says Moline helped Lunda find more space to work at the east end of Ben Butterworth Parkway.
It's a vacant, five-acre site between 53rd and 55th streets. Lunda and Valley Construction employees have been moving dirt and grading the land.
Eventually, crews will build parts of the new highway, then use barges to move the sections to the new bridge and hoist them into place using cranes.
The steel girders in the deck will be around 139 feet long, and the highway segments will be about 80 feet wide.
Schulte says Lunda chose the Moline riverfront because it's easier to move materials on and off barges, compared to Bettendorf where a levee limits access to the Mississippi River.
This year, Lunda will also continue to build the arches for the Iowa-bound side of the new I-74 bridge. The $1.2 billion project should be complete in 2021.
