Greene road repairs wind down
A busy state road and bridge repair season filled with road closures and detours is winding down in Greene County. The work includes reconstruction of the Wades Run Road Bridge over Dunkard Creek in Mount Morris, Perry Township, as well as repairing the last two of nine different roads damaged by landslides, costing a total of more than $2.5 million.
Completed a few weeks ago was a $1.83 million resurfacing, drainage and guardrail project on a three and half-mile stretch of Interstate 79 in Whiteley and Franklin townships.
Resurfacing projects scattered around the county and the widening of one mile of Route 218 in Franklin Township, just north of the Wayne Township line, are nearing completion.
New structural steel support beams for the bridge that will eventually carry the two-lane Wades Run Road over Dunkard Creek were set in place last week.
The state Department of Transportation hired contractors for the projects.
The beams and deck are being replaced, cement parapets are being installed and a pedestrian walkway is being added, said Darin Glitz, PennDOT District 12 senior civil engineer supervisor.
“It’s a very old bridge,” Glitz said. “It’s just a matter of the structure deteriorating over the years.”
Despite a two-week delay in delivery of the beams, the $720,791 project remains on schedule to be completed by Aug. 31, he said.
Posted detours direct traffic around the bridge.
Glitz said he informed the county’s emergency dispatch center and fire departments about road closures and lane restrictions for all the road projects.
He said he also contacted school districts so they could plan alternate bus routes around the projects that started before the school year ended in the spring.
The landslide repair work was divided into two projects.
The first involved fixing three slides within about a five-mile radius of Nineveh in Morris Township at a cost of slightly more than $1 million.
The project actually included four slides with two about a mile apart on the same road, Beulah Ridge Road. Those two are all that is left to be completed in that project.
Glitz said the scheduled completion date is Sept. 29, but he said the work could be done by the end of August.
Repair work on slides under Route 18 and Deerlick Station Road has been completed.
The second project included fixing five slides in several townships at a cost of $848,401. The work is expected to be finished next week.
All the slides have been fixed except for the last one on Clarksville-Marianna Road in Morgan Township, Glitz said.
Other slides in the second project were on South Fork Road in Aleppo Township, Bluff Ridge Road in Wayne Township. Scott Run Road in Center Township and Route 19, just north of Mount Morris.
Glitz said higher than usual rainfall over the last two or three years that resulted from Gulf Coast hurricanes led to the erosion of the ground under the roads.
Water gathers at the base of a slope or hill that supports a road and causes the hillside to slide. The slide then causes crescent-shaped sections of road surfaces to crack and sink.
Glitz said some of the slides left 6- to 8-inch drop offs along the edges of the roadways.