Marshall County continues to negotiate with NIPSCO and PAR for road damage done when the Reynolds-Topeka Electric System Improvement Project was constructed in Marshall County.
During the County Commissioner’s meeting on Monday, Commissioner Mike Delp said during their second meeting NIPSCO offered $43,500 for the damages made to a number of county roads over the last couple of years with this multi-million dollar project. NIPSCO was told “you are not even close to the cost of damage done,” and NIPSCO increased their offer to $100,000.
Commissioner Overmyer said, “That still doesn’t match the road repairs needed to fix the damage done to our county roads by their trucks.”
Delp said the project spent nearly $3,000,000 in stone putting in driveways across farm fields across Marshall County. He said there were 4,500 tri-axel dump-truck loads in and another 4,500 trucks out from the project.
While the county did require a $50,000 bond for the project, that bond was only covering the approaches from county road into the fields. At no time did NIPSCO discuss the amount of truck traffic or the weight of the trucks that would travel the county roadways during this project.
The county feels confident they have good documentation of the roads prior to the construction project with the PASER testing.
There was some discussion of what would happen if an agreement can’t be reached and the commissioners said the lawyers would have to get involved. They want to work toward another meeting between all parties involved.
