County engineer addresses concerns for bridge near Lowell Hill

MT. PLEASANT — Henry County Engineer Jake Hotchkiss provides information to the Board of Supervisors pertaining to county construction, closed roads, and concerns about bridge safety.

County construction closed Penn Avenue to all traffic beginning Wednesday, July 11. Originally they only closed the road to through traffic, but as they make progress on the Lowell Hill project, Hotchkiss says the closure will expand for the next two to three weeks.

“We will be closing Penn Avenue tomorrow morning to start the final section of grading,” Hotchkiss said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “So, we did have that section closed to through traffic for residents on 320th and the mail carrier.”

“Starting tomorrow morning we will be shutting that down and residents on 320th street will have access to the Southwest through our unpaved section,” he explained. “So, the contractor is providing the surface for them to get out toward Pickle Church that is not open to the public. There's nobody else that should be on there. It's just a residence on 320th Street.”

As Hotchkiss gave updates for the Lowell Hill project, Supervisor Chad White brought citizen concerns to Hotchkiss’s attention.

According to White, some residents asked him if it was safe to cross the bridge near the Lowell Hill construction. White looked into the concern and noted scaffolding under part of the bridge.

“They said, ‘It is safe to go across there with the blocking under the beam and everything,’” White explained. “I said I didn’t think it’s anything to be concerned about.”

“No, it’s just an extra support while he’s working around that and actually shouldn’t have any effect on the variant on that,” Hotchkiss responded. “They’re just doing some superficial work to help protect the rebar.”

According to Hotchkiss there is some maintenance work which includes chipping out scaling concrete and doing repair work on the bridge, but the work is not detrimental to the grade.

After completing the current work on Lowell Hill, which is still estimated to begin asphalt work the first week of August, Hotchkiss informed the Board of Supervisors that they would do some work to the north of that bridge.

“There’s a section just north of the bridge that started breaking up that we’ll have to patch and that’s just due to the amount of truck traffic, but it’s not the contractor’s fault,” he said. “There are just a lot of trucks going back and forth there, and we’re seeing that on the north end.”

According to Hotchkiss, this project will only produce a simple lane closure.

“On the other end of the county or the Southwest part of the county, the contractor did get rip wrap placed last week,” Hotchkiss said of the Ash Avenue project.

Crews working on the Ash Avenue project placed one of the entrances for the project, despite working through equipment issues the week before.

“They are working on backfilling and we believe they’ll be possibly ready to begin pavement this week, though that depends on weather,” he said.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com