(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors this (Tues.) morning voted 5-0 to set August 12th at 10:00 am as the date and time to receive bids on a project to replace culverts at the Lower Gar Outlet with a bridge. County Engineer Jeff Rose gave a timeline for the project…
“The first late start will be September 15th, which will include the work for removing the arch culverts underneath the road. Based on what we talked about with the task force, we all agreed we need to get it opened sooner rather than later. So the first, what we’ll call site zero zero, will have to be started by September 15th before any penalty is put on there. Like I said that is to remove everything between the box culverts. The second late start date will be April 1st, for the construction of the bridge itself.”
The road will be closed and a detour will be in effect while the project is going on. It’s expected to take about four months.
There was also discussion about a contingency plan in the event of an extreme rain event, similar to what happed last year, occurring prior to the bridge being constructed. Supervisor Steve Clark agreed that at least having a plan on paper would be good…
“But here again if the estimates he comes up with is say $180,000 to remove that center section, then we have to go through the whole bidding process and it might end up at the same time. Would a contingency plan hurt anything? No. But would it gain us anything? Probably not but it’s sure worth going after and making sure that it’s on the books.”
Fellow supervisor Kim Wermersen questioned at what point would such a contingency plan go into effect…
“How much rain is too much? How much water is too high? Who makes the call? Is it a disaster declaration from the Governor? Those all have to be part of that contingency plan, they just have to be, because maybe tomorrow you want to go and blow that thing out and get it done. What’s the call for that?”
Rose said he would assemble such a plan and bring it to the supervisors at a future meeting for consideration.
