MISSOULA – Kehrwald Drive has seen better days after being under floodwaters since May.
The Missoula County Commissioners and Public Works has taken notice of this problem
"Following the flooding, it was pretty obvious that there would be no access for emergency vehicles. So in consultation with the county commissioners and public works they made the determination to create an emergency access road," said Office of Emergency Management Director Adriane Beck. "For a couple of reasons: One, to insure that emergency vehicles could get down to those residents live on Kehrwald and as well as establish central services such as garbage and mail."
Another reason for the construction is to allow Northwestern Energy into the area to complete repairing and burying utility lines, making this project a little different
"This one is really just a unique situation in that they needed to get in there so they could make some repairs to those gas lines that had been damaged in the flood but they also needed to bury those lines," Beck said. "So we couldn’t kind of finish with the road project until those lines were buried so it really is just a collaboration."
Crews began repairing Kehrwald Drive on June 15 and planned on resuming June 22, but mother nature stepped in and now the project is held up.
"The original plan was to resume that work and complete that work tomorrow, but because of the recent flooding were experiencing that work is on hold," Beck said. "Our hope is that the damage wont be as severe once the water does come back out of there and they will be able to resume and get that completed."
Because the Kehrwald is a private road, the funding for the project will not come out of the road budget but will instead be pulled from the general fund where other flooding funding comes from.
