SANTA CLARA — The waterway below the state Route 30 bridge that runs over the Fish Creek Ponds area will be closed to all boat traffic from Sept. 16 to 25.

The closure is due to a bridge painting project being performed by Amstar of Western New York, a contractor with the state Department of Transportation. During the project, staging and tarps are needed to support the work and prevent paint from dripping into the water. This will obscure the passage for boats, and Amstar asks boaters to keep away from the water near the bridge area for safety reasons.

Amstar Project Manager Susan Vanderbush said that during this time, the bridge will remain open to road traffic with a single-lane flow. She added that a traffic signal will be set up to manage this.

Vanderbush said the work is weather-dependent, although the timeline budgets time for inclement weather, and she was confident the work would be finished by the deadline.

The area is a popular destination for canoeing, kayaking and paddleboarding, given its numerous interconnected waterways. The channel underneath the state Route 30 bridge connects — by water — the state Fish Creek Pond Campground to Upper Saranac Lake, Follensby Clear Pond and several other nearby ponds.

The campground is open until Oct. 13. During the bridge painting, there is not anticipated to be an overland carry route for boats adjacent to the bridge, given the lack of a suitable take-out and put-in on either side of the bridge — and that the state highway traffic will be flowing.

People with a way to transport their watercraft with a vehicle will be able to launch at the nearby Follensby Clear Pond state boat launch, located directly off of state Route 30, approximately 1 mile north of the Fish Creek Ponds Bridge. That, however, is a hand launch — boats must be able to be carried from the vehicle to the water by hand. The parking area has a capacity for 10 vehicles, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

From there, boaters can make their way down the Follensby Clear Pond outlet to connect with Upper Saranac Lake. There is another state Route 30 bridge over the Follensby Clear Pond outlet, but that is not part of this project and there are not anticipated to be any water or highway traffic closures there, according to Vanderbush.