Funding is now secure for the first segment of a state Highway 75 expansion project in the Wood River Valley, but the start of actual roadwork is still more than three years away.
Mike Scott, project manger for the Idaho Transportation Department, confirmed Monday that $19 million is in hand to expand 3.25 miles of the highway to four lanes between Timber Way north of East Fork Road to the Big Wood River Bridge near St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center.
Nonetheless, there's still lots of work to do before construction can begin in spring 2013. According to a schedule released last week by ITD, preliminary design is now under way and is expected to be completed by next summer. Final design will take another year and is scheduled for completion by summer 2011.
Going on concurrently will be right-of-way acquisition, a process not expected to be finished until winter 2012. That process could affect up to 80 property owners adjacent to the highway and require the relocation of up to four homes, buildings or businesses in the McHanville area south of the bridge.
Scott and Tracy Olsen, design project manager for WHPacific, the company hired for design work, are reticent to say how many property owners will be affected because the actual layout of the new roadway isn't yet determined.
"We're very cautious about trying to minimize right-of-way needs," Olsen said.
The new roadway will basically follow the course of the highway that now runs through the area, but where it might shift to won't be determined until final design, Scott and Olsen explained.
Plans call for two 12-foot lanes in each direction. Fourteen-foot center turn lanes will be constructed from Rainbow Bend Road north to the bridge.
Also in the planning is a 200- to 250-foot-long, 8- to 10-foot-high retaining wall south of Hospital Drive where the roadway abuts a hillside. Scott explained that the wall would keep the hillside from gradually sliding into the highway.
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Olsen said the facing of the wall hasn't been determined but that an "urban concrete wall texture is not going to fit in."
The segment is one of nine individual projects identified in an environmental impact statement for the expansion project, which when finished will widen the highway along a 27-mile stretch from Timmerman Junction south of Bellevue to Saddle Road in north Ketchum. The project has been in the planning stages for about 10 years. ITD is hesitant to say when the entire project might be finished because only about $29 million of the estimated $250 million needed for completion has now been secured.
However, funding is now in place for design work on three other segments of the project. Two of the segments involve roadwork within the expansion project while the third involves "wetlands mitigation" work north of Ketchum.
The two roadwork segments are from McKercher Boulevard in Hailey north to Alturas Drive (mid-valley) and from the Big Wood River Bridge near the hospital north to Elkhorn Road, a project that calls for replacement of the bridge.
The wetlands mitigation work is required under the federal Clean Water Act, a law that requires that "no net loss of wetlands" result from road construction projects.
Since some wetlands, mainly in the area south of Bellevue, will be disturbed for the expansion project, ITD is required to create new wetlands or renovate existing wetlands as a tradeoff.
Selected for wetlands mitigation is the Boulder Flats area near Phantom Hill, about nine miles north of Ketchum. Boulder Flats is an extensive wetlands area that was disturbed when Highway 75 was built through it in the 1960s prior to enactment of the Clean Water Act.
Scott said plans call for relocating more than a mile of the highway in Boulder Flats to move it away from the wetlands. Where the highway will be relocated has not been determined.
"They're exploring the route of the new road up there and working with the Forest Service and other agencies to get through the process," Scott said.
He said construction of the new route around Boulder Flats is currently projected for 2014.
Terry Smith: tsmith@mtexpress.com
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This stretch of state Highway 75 north of East Fork Road will be expanded to four lanes when construction starts on a highway expansion project in 2013. Photo by Willy Cook
