Date:
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Contact:
Mike Fleming, WSDOT Project Engineer, Wenatchee, (509) 667-2870
Jeff Adamson, North Central Region Communications Manager, Wenatchee, (509) 667-2815, (509) 669-8778 Cell. E-mail: adamsoj@wsdot.wa.gov
WENATCHEE – Heavy rain and snowmelt earlier this month that produced huge volumes of swiftly flowing water in the Wenatchee River, washed out riverbank in the Tumwater Canyon, west of Leavenworth, undermining US 2. “We’ve hired a contractor to do the emergency rebuild and armoring of the riverbank, but it’s going to require closing the highway, detouring passenger vehicles on the Chumstick Highway and SR 207, and re-routing large trucks over Snoqualmie or White passes,” said WSDOT Project Engineer, Mike Fleming.
The damage is downstream from the Tumwater Dam near the Alps candy store, about five miles west of Leavenworth. During high water events, the dam’s design forces water into the riverbank below the highway. Similar repair work has been required three times in the past two decades. “The previous events washed out the entire roadway and caused weeks-long closures for the repairs. This time, the road surface is still intact and the water has receded, so we’ve got an immediate opportunity to rebuild the riverbank now, before the next high water event,” said Fleming. (The two most recent catastrophic washouts were in ’90 and ’95).
The highway will be closed from 11 a.m. Monday, December 4th until noon on Friday, December 8th. Selland Construction Company crews from Wenatchee will work 20 hour days to complete the work so the roadway can be reopened to accommodate Leavenworth’s Christmas Lighting Festival traffic on Saturday and Sunday. Westbound passenger vehicle traffic will be detoured onto the Chumstick Highway from downtown Leavenworth, through Plain to Lake Wenatchee onto SR 207 to US 2 at Coles Corner. Eastbound traffic will run the 30-mile detour in reverse. Narrow lanes, steep grades and a hairpin curve at Beaver Hill makes the Chumstick Highway unusable by large trucks.
Weekday traffic between Leavenworth and Coles Corner (the SR 207 Lake Wenatchee turn off) for the first week of December, last year was 1,700 to 2,200 vehicles per day. Festival traffic increased traffic volumes to 2,800 vehicles after noon on Friday and 4,300 vehicles per day on Saturday and Sunday. “We’re doing everything we can to get the repairs done as quickly as possible to avoid impacting weekend traffic,” said Fleming.
The high water washed away approximately 3,000 cubic yards of riverbank. 2,500 CY in a 250-foot section near the Alps Candy Store (MP 97) and another 500 CY in a 50-foot section further downstream (MP 95.3) It will take a similar amount of large rock to rebuild the riverbank. 3,000 CY translates to about 350 dump truck loads of fill material, or about 100 round trips a day from the rock source site near Blewett Pass through Leavenworth to the work zone.
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