Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Whitman County Public Works projects large and small shape up for 2017, Director Mark Storey reports.
The biggest is phase four of the Almota Road reconstruction project, a $3.5-$4 million job which calls for work on right-of-way issues, with designs already submitted to Washington Department of Transportation, awaiting funding release for bid.
“It's a tricky spot at the top of Henning Hill,” said Storey, also citing geometric issues and access with landowners on the span between Onecho Bible Church and Union Flat Creek.
Work on the 15-mile project started in 2009. Phase three and phase four remain to be finished.
Phase four will precede phase three because its funding was approved first. Phase three has been approved for partial funding, and survey work will begin this year.
The phase four work will widen and improve the road's base and lower it 10 feet in one area to improve the crest on a hill.
“We hope to be in such a condition not to load limit it in winter and spring,” said Storey. “Roads freeze from the top down and thaw from the top down. You can do hundreds of thousands of dollars damage in a couple hours.”
The Almota project has averaged $1 million to $1.5 million per mile.
Another county road item for 2017 is a package of safety work, now approved and ready to go on Frank Gurney Inc.'s bid of $680,000 for what will be an estimated $800,000 job. Paid for mostly by a $750,000 grant from Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (2015), an initial $80,000 was spent on preliminary work.
The project will include guardrails and/or signs on 31 county roads.
“Those are the two biggest things,” said Storey.
Another item for this year is the completion of the Sand Road project – the last half-mile for the road widening near Pullman. An estimated three to four weeks of work remain for the spring, including the possibility of paving the four-mile stretch.
This relates to the Edmundson Bridge project near Pullman – on hold – for which girders have been bought and are being stored in Spokane. The project awaits a wetlands report, to be compiled by Storey after questions were brought forth by a historical bridge group regarding the 1916 span. The Army Corps of Engineers holds the permit on the work.
“They want it documented with a pretty red bow on it,” Storey said. “The issue is we should do everything in our power to preserve a bridge that is a hundred years old.”
On Tuesday, Storey sent a draft to the Army Corps' Seattle office.
“I thought it would be over in a 10-minute conversation,” he said of the matter which came up last summer. “It has structural deficiencies; it's degrading quickly and is impeding environmental processes. We are intending to fix all three issues.”
The 19-foot bridge on the 26-foot wide road was designed when county engineers were concerned about a time when vehicles would reach 30 miles per hour.
The Steptoe Bridge is another item on the 2017 list, to be done this summer at the bottom of the Steptoe Canyon near the Snake River. The estimated $300,000 project is being managed by the Palouse Conservation District with a $250,000 grant through the state's Salmon Recovery Board. The county will contribute $50,000 in labor and equipment.
Ordinary maintenance preservation-seal coat work will also go on this summer – an estimated $700,000 from the County Arterial Preservation fund.
If Almota's Phase Four does not happen this year, Storey indicated that a $750,000 overlay on Tekoa-Farmington Road planned for 2018 will be moved up. The money comes from the statewide County Road Administration Board.
Other ordinary work this year will include sign upgrades, painting, chip-sealing and crack-sealing – projected at nearly $5 million for 2017 from the maintenance fund.
Public Works overall oversees an $18 million dollar annual budget including $5 million in solid waste and $12-14 million in roads.
Another development for 2017 is a five-year permit granted by Washington State Fish and Wildlife Department for Hydraulic Project Approval (HPA). The permit will allow the county to repair culverts, clear ditches, remove beaver dams if needed and more. Assistant County Engineer Dean Cornelison worked on the long-term permit process in 2016, something that the county has done one year at a time in the past.
“For years we've been struggling with this,” Storey said.
After eight months of work, on and off, by Cornelison, the five-year permit came through.
“We lost a year, it's virtually a four-year,” Cornelison said.
The county's last HPA expired in 2010.
The first project to go under the new permit will be to rebuild the wooden superstructure of Jennings Bridge on Gasline Road. The new work will allow better fish passage.
“There's probably a couple dozen spots each year we'll do on that permit,” Storey said.
Further 2017 Public Works items include finishing the effluent tanks at the Waste Transfer site, the epilogue on the new facility which opened in 2015.
“We can push through a lot more garbage than the old one,” Storey said. “We wanted a 50-year building and we've got it.”
Also in 2017, planning may begin to convert the old building into a recycling facility of some sort.
In addition at the transfer site south of Colfax, plans are underway on how to fill and close cell four, along with repairing gas monitors on cells two and three.
Project list:
Much money from Puget Sound
Whitman County operates more than 1,900 miles of road and more than 300 bridges – all administered from second story offices in the brick Public Service Building in Colfax.
The money comes from more than $2 million in local property tax and $4.5 million in statewide gas tax.
“We are subsidized by gas tax from Puget Sound,” Storey said. “I hear 'why do we send our money to Olympia, let's keep more of it here?' and that's wrong. The reality is we get a lot more money from Olympia than we send to Olympia.
“Every year or two there's a movement in Puget Sound to stop sending the money this way. On many roads out here, there's a house every mile and a mile of road there to manage. There's not enough density in the taxpayer base to support the road system.”
Does the county have enough money each year to do what needs to be done?
“For the most part, yes,” Storey said. “When you look statewide, our dollars spent per mile is one of the lowest in the state.”
If more money was there, he suggested it might go to more road graders and plows.
“You'd have to have more tax,” Storey said of the items for which grants do not apply. “I think we do a pretty good job of maintaining the road system with the money we have. I do not advocate raising taxes significantly to put out more snowplows and road-graders. Gas tax, property tax, pays for those things.”
The county's oldest road-grader is a 1985 Mack used as a spare.
“Nine hundred or 1,000 hours a year is put on a road-grader,” Storey said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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