Public Works slates dirt road closures

Whitman County Public Works Department is in preparation for its yearly notice to close 361 miles of roads around the county from Nov. 15 until March 15.

This year, an extra precaution will be added at one road, to supplement the familiar seasonal closure signs. Concrete highway barriers will be placed at each end of Catholic Cemetery Road north of Tekoa.

The move comes after the Washington State Department of Ecology informed the county that erosion caused by vehicles using the road in winter was adding mud to Hangman Creek.

The concrete-barriers experiment may be followed for other roads next year.

“It would take a small army to do that to all these roads,” Mark Storey, Public Works director, commented.