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One at a time, the roadways of Houghton County are reopening with a smooth blacktop, but some motorists are still asking “What’s taking so long?”
It’s important for motorists to understand just how much damage was created in that few short hours in June, and how much money it will take to rebuild those roads.
One road that is in the works is Canal Road in Houghton that crews will be making some progress on very soon.
Houghton County Road Engineer Kevin Harju said, ‘The design work is pretty much done. It’s been submitted to Lansing for MDOT’s review. We’re hoping to be able to put out a bed lining within the next week or so. Completion will probably be hopefully mid to late October. It might stretch into November at this point.”
One of the issues at hand is funding.
Harju said, “There’s three different funding sources that were dealing with. On our primary roads, those are typically our federal aid roads and we are working directly with Federal Highway Administration and with MDOT on those and those have been moving along here for several weeks already. We do have final plans for a lot of those bigger fixes on the federal aid roads. It’s now a matter of getting approval through MDOT after they review the plans that are submitted.”
Some of the funding has been approved, but the actual monies will not become available until late in the winter season, leaving the road commission searching for gap funding to be able to continue its progress.
“As the construction progresses, the road commission will be responsible for 100 percent of financing that and then get reimbursed in February. However, were looking at additional avenues to be able to do that in the tune of about $10 million. So that’s a work in progress but we’re still moving ahead with the construction and then we’ll figure out a way on how we’re going to fund it until February,” said Harju.
Another delay is that each culvert is custom built and takes 30 days to construct once the plans have been submitted, which means that additional laborers will be assisting in the projects.
“We’ll be chasing snowflakes trying to get some of these structures in unfortunately but they are in the process, they’re steadily coming in. As more projects develop, we’ll be utilizing a lot of local contractors and contractors from out of the area, too, have been bidding on these projects also,” he said.
Although repair work will carry over into the spring, Harju says he is utilizing every resource available to complete as much as possible before winter.
