The Warwick-based company that previously worked on the westbound Washington Bridge before its sudden closure last December is the state’s choice to tear it down.

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s (RIDOT) public bid portal Friday afternoon revealed Aetna Bridge Co. was awarded a tentative contract to demolish the bridge by March 2025.

Aetna was one of two vendors that responded to RIDOT’s request for proposals. The other bidder was Manafort Brothers Inc., headquartered in Plainville, Connecticut, but has an office in Cumberland.

Manafort will receive $100,000 as part of the state’s incentive to attract bidders.

Aetna estimated the cost to demolish the bridge was $45.8 million — over $5 million more than the state’s price tag. Manafort’s bid was for $43.8 million. The overall cost to demolish and rebuild the westbound highway over the Seekonk River is tagged at over $400 million.

A technical review group found that Aetna’s plan was overall a better value and at they indicated they could do the work in 50 days fewer than the bid request asked for, said RIDOT Communications Director Liz Pettengill.

“Secondly, they are assuming all the risk,” she said.

The demolition process is divided into four parts: the Gano Street ramp, west end of the bridge, east cantilever spans, and east end of the structure. The initial RFP noted that the existing substructure “shall remain in place for the potential repair and reuse” in the reconstruction of the bridge.

RIDOT plans to impose a $30,000 daily “disincentive” if Aetna misses the March 20, 2025 completion date. Meanwhile, the department is still soliciting bids for the roughly $368 million contract to rebuild a new bridge by August 2026.

Final bids are due July 3.

Aetna had previously worked on the now-canceled $78 million rehabilitation of the Washington Bridge as part of a design-build team led by Barletta Heavy Division. The project came to a stop after engineers last December discovered broken anchor rods that put the westbound lanes of I-195 at risk of collapse.

The company was also one of 12 contractors that received a letter from lawyers for Gov. Dan McKee’s administration notifying them that they may be sued over Washington Bridge work. 

“Aetna Bridge Company is proud to be identified as the ‘apparent best value respondent’ by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation,” Aetna spokesperson Frank McMahon said in an emailed statement.

“With over 79 years of experience in bridge construction, repair, and demolition, our team is ready to get to work on this critical transportation infrastructure project for the State of Rhode Island,” he continued 

Aetna is also working on the ongoing rehabilitation of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge linking New London and Groton, Connecticut, via I-95. That project is expected to be completed June 25, 2025, according to the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

There will be a lone scheduled rematch of last year’s Atlantic 10 women’s basketball title game, and the University of Rhode Island will play it on the road. 

The Rams will visit Richmond at a date and time to be determined. That’s courtesy of conference schedule pairings that were released Thursday afternoon. 

The Spiders and VCU should offer a pair of rugged road tests after finishing a combined 31-5 in league play last season. URI also visits Davidson, Fordham and St. Bonaventure for single contests. Jim Crowley enters his second year of this stint with the Bonnies – he returned to Olean for 2022-23 after seven seasons at Providence. 

Saint Joseph’s sets up as a headlining single home game for the Rams. The Hawks closed 15-3 in league play last year and have played in two straight postseasons. Dayton, La Salle, George Washington and Loyola Chicago will also visit Kingston. 

More: URI men’s basketball faces rough road schedule in 2023-24

URI’s home-and-home opponents include a pair of teams who contended for a conference title last season. George Mason closed 14-4 and Duquesne was one game behind at 13-5. Saint Louis and regional rival Massachusetts both finished in the bottom half of the standings – the Minutewomen struggled to a 2-16 mark after Tory Verdi qualified for three straight postseasons and left for Pittsburgh. 

The Rams never quite hit full stride prior to March last season, finishing 21-14 overall and 10-8 in league play. A home win over No. 25 Princeton was followed by road losses to Providence and St. John’s, two defeats that damaged URI’s postseason chances. The Rams took out Dayton, Saint Joseph’s and Saint Louis in the conference tournament before suffering a 65-51 defeat to Richmond in the title round. 

URI and the rest of the league will return to the Henrico Sports & Events Center from March 5-9 for the second straight edition of the league championship. The facility secured hosting rights after two previous years at Chase Fieldhouse in Delaware. 

bkoch@providencejournal.com

On X: @BillKoch25 

Immigration occupies center stage in the 2024 presidential campaign and also was a major focus during the first presidential debate Thursday night between President Joe Biden and the presumptive GOP nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Immigration is a top issue for voters and for Trump, while the Biden administration has struggled to deal with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years.

Biden during the 90-minute debate at CNN in Atlanta defended his administration’s handling of immigration and blamed Trump for tanking a bipartisan U.S. Senate border security deal.

Biden and Trump trade insults, accusations of lying in acrimonious presidential debate

Biden also pointed to that deal as a reason he should be reelected, because the White House was able to forge the agreement in the first place.

“We worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement,” Biden said.

Senate Republicans rejected the bipartisan border security deal earlier this year, siding with their House colleagues and Trump. The agreement would have significantly overhauled U.S. immigration law by creating a temporary procedure to shut down the border during active times and raising the bar for asylum claims.

Trump in the debate argued that Biden did not need legislation to enact policy changes at the southern border because “I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”

In early June, Biden made the most drastic crackdown on immigration of his administration, issuing an executive order that instituted a partial ban on asylum proceedings at the southern border.

Trump called that action “insignificant.”

The debate came the day after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas gave a briefing from Tucson, Arizona, about a decline in migrant encounters following Biden’s executive order.

He said the Tucson sector has “seen a more than 45 percent drop in U.S. Border Patrol encounters since the president took action, and repatriations of encountered individuals in Tucson have increased by nearly 150 percent.”

“Across the entire southern border, Border Patrol encounters have dropped by over 40 percent,” Mayorkas said.

‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

Trump cited his prior policies that he felt were successful and criticized Biden for rolling them back, such as one that required migrants to remain in Mexico while they awaited their asylum cases.

Biden slammed Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that separated parents from their children in efforts to deter unauthorized immigrants at the border.

“When he was president he was … separating babies from their mothers and putting them in cages,” Biden said.

And, without citing evidence, Trump blamed immigrants for crime, calling it “migrant crime.”

Overall violent crime in the country is down by 15%, according to recent FBI statistics, and researchers have found that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens.

Trump brought up the death of a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, and blamed Biden’s immigration policies.

“All he does is make our country unsafe,” Trump said.

In late February, Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, was reported missing by her roommate when she did not return home after a run on the campus of the University of Georgia at Athens.

Local police found her body and shortly afterward arrested a 26-year-old man from Venezuela for her murder — an immigrant previously arrested in Georgia on a shoplifting charge who entered the country without authorization in 2022, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. U.S. House Republicans in reaction passed the Laken Riley Act.

Trump was asked by debate moderators how he would carry out mass deportations, but he did not go into detail.

He has repeatedly claimed he would carry out a mass deportation campaign of undocumented immigrants by utilizing local law enforcement, the National Guard and potentially the U.S. military. He’s done so on the campaign trail and during a lengthy interview with Time Magazine. 

“We have to get a lot of these people out and we got to get them out fast because they’re destroying our country,” Trump said during the debate.