Workers can be seen suspended below Port Royal bridge this week. What are they are up to?
It’s not everyday you see workers in buckets — at night — suspended under a major bridge but that’s what is occurring in Port Royal this week.
The rare sight is occurring at the Bell Bridge in Port Royal, the bridge that connects the town with residential neighborhoods and commercial areas of Shell Point and the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Station Parris Island on the other side of Battery Creek.
The bridge doesn’t just transport vehicles. Two 14-inch diameter water pipes also hang on each side.
About every three years, crews with the Beaufort-Jasper Water Sewer Authority need to inspect those major lines, said Jeff La Rue, BJWSA’s chief communications officer.
Given their location hanging from the sides of a bridge, it takes special equipment, specifically a rig similar to a cherry picker, a hydraulic crane with a platform at the end for raising and lowering people that’s often used to reach overhead cables.
To inspect the bridge water pipes, however, BJWSA workers must go out and down, not up. The arm on the BJWSA cherry picker reaches out over the railing and lowers a bucket below the bridge so the crew can check the pipes and also the structures that hold them in place, La Rue said.
“If you can picture what electric guys use to go up electrical poles,” La Rue says. “It looks like that. It goes out over the railing and hangs down so guys can stand in the bucket.”
The process is causing some traffic disruption but that can’t be helped because the BJWSA vehicles need to drive slowly down the bridge checking the water mains on both sides.
Lane closures began Tuesday and will continue through Friday. To limit the inconvenience, however, the inspections are occurring nightly between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Drivers should anticipate delays and are urged to use caution while traveling through the area for their safety and that of the BJWSA crews, La Rue said.
The BJWSA treats and delivers 20 million gallons of drinking water to 60,000 retail customers across a 750-square mile service area has an average altitude between 13 and 39 feet above sea level. It also collects and treats nine million gallons of wastewater daily across 1,420 miles for about 43,000 sewer accounts.
This story was originally published June 4, 2025 at 12:16 PM.
