Date:
Friday, February 17, 2006
Contact:
Marco Foster, Engineering Manager, (360) 757-5991 (Burlington)
Dustin Terpening, WSDOT Communications, (360) 757-5997 (Burlington)
NEWHALEM – For the first time since November 2003, WSDOT will open both lanes of State Route 20 in Whatcom County east of Newhalem. WSDOT and its contractor Wilder Construction are putting the finishing touches on an $11 million rock catching ditch next to the highway that will help protect the road and drivers from the unstable hillside above.
Crews plan to open the second lane of SR 20 before noon today. The road has been reduced to one lane, and periodically closed, since 2003 when a massive rock slide cut loose and smashed into the road.
The road will remain two lanes until warmer weather returns.
“As soon as the weather warms up, we’re going to lay new asphalt and install new guardrail, and then we’ll be completely finished,” said Engineering Manager Marco Foster. “That should take about two weeks to do.”
WSDOT fully expects to have all the paving and guardrail done before the North Cascades Pass opens this year.
Crews blasted and excavated the hillside to build the 700-foot long, 107-foot wide and 150-foot tall ditch. The rock catching ditch slopes down and away from the road into the hillside. At its lowest point the rock catching ditch is 10 feet lower than SR 20. It is lined with small granular material that will help absorb the energy of falling rocks. A 21-foot tall rock wall also separates the road from the ditch for added protection.
Crews removed upwards of 400,000 tons of rock and debris from the hillside. That's enough rock to fill a standard football field 56 feet high (almost six stories). Each dump truck carried roughly 27 tons of rock. At 27 tons per trip, it took approximately 14, 815 dump truck loads. If you lined up each 55-foot long truck, you would have a line of trucks 154 miles long; enough trucks to stretch single file from Tacoma to Canada on I-5.
Whatcom County was declared a disaster area by the governor in October 2003 because of inclement weather. The Federal Highway Administration later determined that the rock slide was a result of the heavy rains in October. Thus, WSDOT was able to access emergency funding from the federal government to repair and protect the highway.
For more detailed information about the project and to see pictures of the ditch, visit www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/sr20/rockslideditch/.
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