The Maine Department of Transportation wants to hear what Boothbay has to say about the Barters Island Bridge.

Ted Talbot, MDOT press secretary, wrote in an email that the bridge, which is located near the Trevett General Store, will be the subject of an upcoming public meeting at 6 p.m. June 30 at the Boothbay Fire Department.

The bridge is slated to undergo a $4.25 million restoration project, which was the largest of Lincoln County's MDOT projects.

So far, Talbot wrote, the engineering and design consult firm McFarland Johnson has been brought on board.

Now, more information – such as survey data, preliminary soil borings, and traffic and accident data – is being collected.

But a different sort of information will be gathered during a June 30 meeting, as the project will seek local opinion and concerns with the project prior to coming up with a design.

“We will develop our recommendations for the project after we have gathered all this information and come back to Boothbay to present those recommendations at a formal public meeting for additional feedback,” Talbot wrote.

Talbot added that while no formal plans for the bridge have been given the green light, several other factors have come into play: the steel swing span is currently in poor condition and will need to be replaced, the center stone pier that supports the bridge might need to be replaced but the possibility of rehabbing it remains. Because the approach spans were replaced in the 1980s, they are unlikely due for a replacement which likely rules out a total bridge replacement, Talbot wrote.

Because the bridge is the only way onto Barters Island by land, the MDOT will need to put in a temporary bridge detour and because the bridge doesn't open to marine traffic from December to April, any construction will likely happen at that time.

Talbot also wrote that the way in which the bridge opens will be evaluated. Currently, the gates and the span are manually operated, but Talbot wrote that the different possibilities – manual versus automated gates and span – will be weighed.

There will be a preliminary public meeting June 30, then a preliminary design and recommendations in February. The formal public meeting will be in March 2016 before the final design in completed in 2017.