Crews to work underground and at night, but caution urged
Around two months of roadway repair work is planned for perhaps the most heavily-traveled thoroughfare in Gilmer County — the northernmost entrance to Highlands at East Ellijay, also known as Highlands Crossing Shopping Center. Fortunately, the work will be underground and performed at night.
East Ellijay Police Chief and Code Enforcement Officer Larry Callahan said the early May tornado that hit parts of the county — and caused some flooding at the shopping area’s lowest entrance — brought to light a problem with the underground pipe.
“We had a storm water collection location there at Highlands Crossing where it comes off (Highway 515) that stopped up and caused some flooding,” he noted. “We hired a crew to fix the original problem, and when they got in there to clean up what had got it stopped up, they found out there is a 54-inch pipe — a big pipe — that runs about 20 feet underneath Highlands Crossing, which is the main road through there that goes by everything,” he said. “What had happened is that over time the bottom 10 or 15 percent of that pipe was gone; when you got to the bottom, there was just nothing there. It was an old metal pipe and had rotted away.”
The Highlands shopping area was under development from 2000 to 2005 as more stores and restaurants were built and opened, Callahan pointed out, so the road and underlying drainage system are 25 years old.
“Obviously the worry there is that, over time, it would erode out the bottom and the sides and cause a sinkhole — and it is right in the center of the roadway of possibly one of the busiest roads in Gilmer County,” he said.
A ‘spincasting’ project
Several companies put in bids on the project, and the firm chosen is going to use a method called “spincasting,” said Callahan.
“They will build a concrete pipe beside the pipe that’s already in place,” he explained. “The advantage to that is they don’t have to tear the road up, and they’re going to try and do most of the work at night — hopefully around 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. And we’re hoping to get by with just closing one lane.”
Still, with an extensive project there will be equipment staged near the roadway. Some of the equipment may be arriving this week, so motorists are urged to use caution.
“Even though the crew will be working underground, there will still be a lot of equipment around the site,” Callhan affirmed. “It’s probably going to take around two months to complete it. They’re going to start working in that bad curve right there, and will go all the way up — depending on the integrity of the pipe when they get in there — to somewhere in the area in front of the entrance to Lowe’s, that’s where they’ll stop.”
Two goals
“We tried to pick a time that would give the workers as much time as they need and the least amount of disruption, but there’s going to be disruptions, that’s just a fact,” Callahan added. “But our goal is to never have a total road closure. We’ve got three lanes; the center turn lane we’ll convert into a traffic lane, as needed. And most of the businesses, fortunately, have two entrances. Our goal is to never close off a business or totally block the road. But this is a construction project, so there may be things we don’t foresee.”
The project comes in with a price tag of $500,000, and the city will be able to pay 10 percent of that cost with LMIG (Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant) funds that were leftover from last year and are designated for next year.