New London Road pavement coming out on Lowell Hill

The condition of New London Road, on Lowell Hill just south of Lowell has gone from bad to worse.

On Wednesday, the Henry County Engineer’s Office closed the road.

On Thursday morning, County Engineer Jake Hotchkiss told the Board of Supervisors that the decision has been made to pull up the pavement on the hill.

“It’s quite a problem. It hasn’t stopped moving,” Hotchkiss said. “We put cold patch in there trying to close up the ruts just to see if it would be a minor movement.

“Once it jumped into the northbound lane, that’s when we had to make the decision to close the road.”

He said that there is unstable ground under the path of traffic.

“Tomorrow, we may have a contractor coming in to pull off the pavement,” he said. “Next week, a contractor will be hauling material away.

“Once we remove that overburden, we’re going to make a determination whether we can put a temporary road in there to at least get us by.”

He said he hopes removing the pavement will help stabilize the slide.

“Whatever we can get off will help potentially slow it down,” he said. “Hopefully late next week, we’ll know more about what that hillside looks like once the pavement is off and you can actually see what’s going on.”

Hotchkiss said that he believes the road slide was caused by heavy rains that fell in June and July.

“We feel like there’s a definite correlation to that event,” he said. “The river was up, and when the river went down, that’s when we saw all the movement.

“Once that river went down, it directly correlates to that moisture being pulled out of the hillside, and then the damage happened.”

Because of that, Hotchkiss said the county may be eligible for an emergency declaration, which would make funds available to help pay for, what he called “an expensive project.”

“That declaration is key for us as far as some avenues to help fund this,” he said. “Otherwise, it’ll be a project funded 100 percent by us, which it may end up being what it is.”

Hotchkiss said he has reached out to state Sen. Jeff Reichman and state Rep. Joe Mitchell to see if they could help with a declaration and asked the supervisors to do the same.

“That declaration would be huge for us, because it would allow us to get the ball rolling to make sure it gets done,” he said. “I don’t know what our chances are, but I feel like we need to push that option as hard as we can.”

There is a posted detour that runs south on New London Road to Highway 16 east in Lee County.

The detour continues on Highway 16 east, then turns north on 280th Avenue (Bridgeport Road) and west on County Road J20 back into Henry County and into the north side of Lowell.

Hotchkiss acknowledged that local residents may use gravel roads as a detour rather than the posted detour.

Because of that, the Board of Supervisors, at Hotchkiss’ urging, approved the installation of a stop sign at the T-intersection of Penn Avenue and Henry-Lee Street.

“With the extra traffic and the feeling of a lot more movement, we want to be sure that it’s clear that you stop at that intersection,” Hotchkiss said.