Emergency road repair to cost Bartholomew County $300k

Bartholomew County will be suspending chip and seal work on its roads for the rest of the summer. That is so that they can repair a slide that destroyed part of Whitehorse Road on the western edge of the county.

County highway engineer Danny Hollander explained yesterday to the county commissioners that a large slide of has caused part of Whitehorse Road to drop about 18 inches, over more than 100 feet of roadway. The affected area is the 3400 block of Whitehorse Road, about half a mile from the Brown County line.

Hollander said that the first dip appeared about two years ago when a 4-foot by 4-foot section dropped about 2 to 3 inches. At that time the dip was filled with asphalt, and the county cut into the hillside to shift the road away from the sliding side. But this spring every time it rained, the problem got worse, eventually widening to about 8 feet over about 150 feet — taking the shoulder and about half of the southbound lane.

After consulting with INDOT he found two companies that will repair the roadway through a process of driving 30-foot long steel nails sideways through the slide area, anchoring the whole roadway to solid ground again, and then building a concrete retaining wall along the bank. He said the county has never done work this extensive before. The road has been reduced to a single lane until repairs can be made.

Two companies were able to provide bids for the complicated work, one company from Colorado and one from Kentucky. Commissioners approved a contract for the emergency slope stabilization project of just under $300,000 from GeoSpecialties out of Nicholasville, Kentucky. Hollander said the work is expected to take at least six weeks.

After the road stabilization is complete, the county will have to rebuild the road base. Hollander said that the county already has a contract with Milestone to rebuild the road this year

But commissioners said that the unexpected expense means that the county will have to suspend its chip and seal program for the rest of the summer. In chip and seal operations, an asphalt and gravel mix is applied to roads to repair minor cracks and extend the life of the road by up to 10 years, commissioners said.