Warm weather means it’s time for road work on local roads and highways. Castle Country Radio was able to catch up with Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Spokesperson, Kevin Kitchen to talk about upcoming Spring time road projects taking place in and around our area.
Generally, Springtime road projects start in March or April but because we’ve had unusual snow storms present themselves this year it has but some road projects on hold. “I know our maintenance crews, we wanted to get up there where we did the project last year around Highway 6, between Emma Park and heading east on there. There is some rock walls, we got there, that we use, and we’re hoping our maintenance guys can do a little mitigation on that, some of that will be weather dependent and activity dependent,” said Kitchen. Hopefully, work will begin soon, if the weather cooperates like it has the last few days.
UDOT has been working with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Carbon County to develop a plan on the burn scar problems from the Bear Fire. “There at Crandall Canyon there’s a culvert that we’re trying to get upgraded. Working between us and these other entities, so we can deal with some of these issues we’ve had with flooding coming down those canyons. That is one project that we’re trying to get hot and heavy on right now, and again, one that’s been partnered with the feds and the county on that. The Federal Government was able to step up and provide some significant upstream improvements and so we’ve partnered with them on that to see if we can’t help keep things from getting all the way down to Highway 6 and creating havoc there,” said Kitchen. This is a project that will be starting shortly and will be ongoing till its complete.
What would a road project be without a chip seal project scheduled to take place this summer. “Another one we’ve got going, we’ll have a, it’s basically a chip/seal, but we’re going to resurfacing US-6 from the hospital, all the way down towards Wellington. So that’s about $1.8 million project and I don’t anticipate we’ll hit that until maybe around June, because of the types of temperatures that we are seeing. Typically, chip/seal do a little bit better in the warmer temperatures towards mid-summer,” stated Kitchen. There are some projects that will be taking place in Emery County as well and folks can find those on https://www.udot.utah.gov/connect/ and if you search for planning you will be able to see the different projects that are scheduled.