|
|
Home >
Media >
US 2 Highway Closure
US 2 Closed Between Leavenworth and Lake
Wenatchee Next Week for Riverbank Repair in Tumwater Canyon
Washington State Department of Transportation - News
North Central Region – PO Box 98, Wenatchee, WA., 98807-0098, (509)
667-3000
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 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
US 2 Closed Between Leavenworth and Lake Wenatchee Next Week for Riverbank
Repair in Tumwater Canyon
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.
###
|
|
