By Byron Higgin
County Correspondent
“The July 3 rain was a heck of a rain,” Lyon County Highway Engineer Aaron VanMoer said at Tuesday’s board of commissioners meeting.
“It’s unbelievable how this happens at least once every year,” he said. “It really is difficult to figure out what to do about funding with federal and state roads.”
Due to the heavy rain, damages were done on several county roads. VanMoer talked about culvert damage, pavement failures and washouts.
“This is a list of our major sites,” VanMoer said. He listed programs he felt the county was eligible for and said the county’s damage estimate was about $343,000.
A mile-and-a-half south of County Road 23, a culvert gave out. “The road could have fallen in, but it didn’t,” said VanMoer. “We dug the road out and put a new pipe in and got the road opened up,” he said. The cost of repair was about $35,000.
Another big washout occurred on County Road 19 west of Marshall. The estimated cost of repair was $60,000. “We took the culvert out and put in a new ground pipe and got this road open,” said VanMoer. Another washout on County Road 5 caused damage at an estimated cost of $3,000.
In Lynd, County Road 5 had “pavement fall through,” said VanMoer. It caused a hole in the pavement that had to be dug up and repaired at a cost of $5,000.
“Down in Tracy (County Road 29), at the Junction of 10 and 23, had a section of land under the road give away. North of Tracy on County Road 11, a walk-through culvert caused problems. Between US 14 and County Road Two, culvert problems caused between $120,000 to $750,000 worth of damage.”
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.