The Henderson County Fiscal Court gave a collective thumbs-down Tuesday to a proposal to build a short section of Green River Road #1 50 fifty feet from its current span right next to the Green River.
The reason for the court’s dismay is the projected price of $220,000, up from an original estimate of $144,000 that it heard in late February.
A slide that collapsed a piece of road into the Green River occurred in early February, and Fiscal Court has been mulling the best way to remedy the situation since.
Judge-Executive Brad Schneider said there’s also no guarantee that a slide won’t happen again, which would put the court in the same predicament of finding the best fix in a different area or even in the same spot.
“Do we fix something just to see it break again?” said Schneider, who was in favor of closing the road.
At the meeting, County Engineer Nick Stallings presented new findings, his third such presentation in the past two months.
The portion of the road been closed to traffic since the slide, but motorists still go over dirt and rock mounds, move barrels and have even dug up a guardrail so that they can pass and drive the gravel road in eastern Henderson County, said Stallings at Tuesday’s meeting.
In a late February meeting, Stallings suggested three methods to fix the problem. One is to rebuild the collapsed portion to roadworthy conditions, which he said would range from $378,000 to $437,000. He added that those numbers could range plus or minus 20%. This option has since been crossed off the list by the Fiscal Court.
Another solution is to abandon the roadway, meaning that the road would be closed at points on either side of the road slide. This is still an option and seemed to be favored by the court at Tuesday’s meeting. Stallings previously estimated the cost to close the road, including putting up fences at two points, would be $20,000.
The relocation, which Stallings first presented at the February meeting, would create a new road section passing through Kentucky Division of Forestry land.
The price increase for the road relocation Stallings spoke of at Tuesday’s meeting was based on the length of the section increasing 200 feet, from 650 to 850, longer because the relocation would need to be 50 feet from its current center line instead of the originally planned 30 feet from center line.
The price estimate also went up because Stallings said he’ll need 500 tons more of rock and need to lay down geo tech fabric to build the road, which hadn’t been planned on before.
Schneider said there is one farmer who uses the road to access his fields. If Green River Road #1 is closed, he still has access to his fields via other roads, the judge said.
Magistrate Keith Berry said the farmer would be angry if the court closed the road.
But Magistrate Taylor Tompkins said the court is tasked with making decisions based on what’s best for the entire county over a single resident.
Schneider said he and Berry would speak with the farmer before the next Fiscal Court meeting.
