US 250 South rock slide abatement project 75% complete

Nov. 26—FAIRMONT — The $3.4 million rock wall abatement project that began in February on US 250 South is 75 percent complete and should be open to two-way traffic by year end, according to Jason Nelson, lead project engineer with the West Virginia Division of Highways.

"When the project began in February we never thought it was going to take this long," Nelson said. "But, we hit a snag in mid-summer and had to sort of regroup."

The snag came in the form of an old water main inside the abandoned coal mine portal in the middle of the southernmost hill in the project area between Holbert Road and the southern leg of Mary Lou Retton Drive.

"That water main forced us to have to re-bid the work so it could be sealed off properly," Nelson said.

When crews went in to seal off the water main, they had to do more work to ensure water from the hill flows down to the river below without further eroding the work that's been done to prevent future rock slides.

"We're dealing with a lot of loose-backed materials, scaling, stabilization, using what's called shotcrete and full nail systems in the existing banks to armor and secure that area," WVDOH District 4 Engineer Mike Daley said in a West Virginia Department of Transportation podcast recently.

Shotcrete is a liquid concrete that is applied with a dispenser that looks like a firefighter's fire hose.

"We've got to upgrade our drainage structures and once we get into this, we've got to mitigate different drain structures to be able to handle the runoff that we have, be able to exhaust it into the river properly," Daley continued.

Nelson stopped short of calling the .24-mile project an engineering marvel.

"The work is not just on the hillside," Nelson said. "There are a system of pipes that are under the roadway to make sure the water flows to the river."

In the next few weeks, the current one lane of traffic will shift to the hillside lane to allow crews to work on the part of the project that's under the roadway near the river.

And while motorists would like to see the project completed soon, it will not be fully completed until April 2023.

"That's because asphalt plants in West Virginia shut down for the winter," Nelson said.

When the asphalt plants are back up and running, that will allow WVDOH to resurface the roadway and put the finishing touches on the road.

Nelson said the rock wall project and the Interstate 79 widening project are separate projects that just happened to come up on the state's five-year work schedule around the same time. And, due to the two projects' close proximity, it has forced the two companies working on each project to have to communicate and coordinate some of their work in order to try and minimize negative impacts on motorists.

"We just want to make sure we have a safe road and residents can drive through there and not have anymore rock slides," Nelson said.

According to Nelson, the processes used in the rock wall project are not used that often in West Virginia, but are widely used in mountainous western states in the U.S.

"We have used this same type of work along the Ohio River in West Virginia, however," Nelson said.

The project started with crews removing loads of vegetation and dead trees from the work area and scaling back the area to exposed rock.

Workers have since installed a material that resembles chain link fencing.

"That material is pinned into the rock and some of the concrete and on top of it, they applied a material called shotcrete to stabilize it," Nelson said.

Portions of the project area now include a new wall and a drainage system to handle stormwater runoff.

"What we've been doing really seems to show a great improvement," Daley said.

Reach Eric Cravey at 304-367-2523.