05/09/11 County crews have repaired Olive Trail just in time for the weekend.
County Highway Department Superintendent Neal Haeck announced that as of 2:30 p.m. on Friday the road was officially open for business once again. A collapsed culvert on Monday afternoon forced the closing of the road until crews could repair the problem.
Luckily it was a project that the county had already begun the initial stages of working on.
“We were in the permitting phase,” said Haeck. “Two weeks ago we started the process of getting the proper permits from IDEM (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) and the DNR (Department of Natural Resources). That process usually takes a few months but since the Commissioners declared the emergency on Monday we were able to go ahead and repair the road and get our permits after the fact.”
The permits are necessary whenever work is done around a water way or wetlands. The highway department had materials on hand for the job they hoped to do later in the summer.
“The main thing is the pipe has to be exactly the same size, length and height and you have to use natural rock for your erosion control. We actually probably made things a little better around there for erosion. I’m guessing but I believe the original pipe had to have been in there or at least 50 years, probably longer.”
Rusty Nixon Correspondent
