Crews worked for two days taking core samples from one of the piers that is intended to support the new bridge over the Washita River near Verden.

In October, repeated testing on the pier showed irregularities in the drill shaft concrete, which has delayed construction on the bridge.

“We just completed coring the pier down about 80 feet and we took all of the cores to be tested in Oklahoma City,” said ODOT Division II, Anadarko Residency Construction Project Manager Johnny Walkup.

There they will be placed in a controlled environment and tested for compression strength breakage to determine their strength. The results of that will determine what we do next and whether we replace or modify the drill shaft.”

Walkup said it will take roughly a week to get the results of the testing.

According to Walkup, crews used a “split spoon,” a container inside a drill pipe, to drill down five feet, then they removed the five-foot core sample, and began the process over again until the desired number of core samples was reached.