SR 4 culvert work nearly finished

One SR 4 culvert project was completed on Tuesday near Naselle, and, if all goes well, the remaining project to replace two culverts on the highway near of Cathlamet will finish in mid-October, just a couple weeks later than its expected finish date.

With 11 reported traffic accidents or incidents on the Risk Road detour since August 17, and an almost constant flood of complaints to the sheriff's office about reckless or speeding drivers, it can't come soon enough.

"We had to get approval from the Wahkiakum County Commissioners to put the detour in place," Tamara Hellman, from the WSDOT Communications Department said. "If there wasn't a detour in place the contractor would have incurred more time. Putting the detour in place has saved us time and resources. They are able to get the big trucks in here and just get it done in a shorter period of time.

"Because they are working in water there is something called the fish window, and they have to be out of the water at a certain time to meet certain environmental deadlines. That we were granted the detour was really beneficial in getting this project done quickly."

Last Thursday, Washington State Department of Transportation employees were hard at work on SR 4 in the Elochoman Valley. Some truck drivers had been on site since two in the morning and were getting a little hungry as they waited for their next instructions.

Nearby, one culvert was already in place, and a massive hole was being dug to make room for the second one.

According to the WSDOT website, they have been removing barriers to fish passage since 1991.

"The existing culverts were too small," Engineer Scott Seroshek said. "We are trying to return to an estuary for the river, so it can have a natural conveyance of water to give smaller fish refuge. This larger culvert is funded by the Bonneville Power Administration through the Department of Fish and Wildlife. The north culvert that we are pretty much done with was funded by WSDOT. We're trying to provide more habitat. Not just for fish but for all species that live in a wetland estuary type setting."

"A lot of fish passages that went in the 40s, 50s and 60s were relatively small," Hellman said. "The culverts that we are putting in are 12' x 12' and 12' x 20', so they are huge areas that water and wildlife can go through."

"They are designed to prevent huge scour at the end of the culverts," Seroshek said." We want there to be velocities that allow fish to go up and down naturally not forcing them through a smaller culvert with higher velocity, which some of the older culverts do."

"It has been a challenging site because of the tidal influence and some of the rain we've had," he added. "It's not the most ideal construction when you've got all the water."

The water must be properly processed and can't simply be dumped off the side of the road, so there is a lot of water quality monitoring, according to Seroshek.

There were several large blue tanks nearby just to pump and process the water, which would have filled the pit they were trying to dig if barriers hadn't been set up to block the water nearby.

"It's mostly sand and silt that makes the water muddy. We can take it out in the tanks and deposit it," WSDOT Project Engineer Joanna Lowrey said. "This is part of the treatment of the dirty water. The sand and silt settles into the crevices of the gravel and disrupts the habitat, but some habitat requires clean gravel to spawn in."

Lowrey pointed to some straw on the ground.

"Straw was placed on the ground to protect that soil from erosion," she said. "When the rain falls, it hits the straw and dissipates the energy and the water can be absorbed without creating the muddy water. Hardly anything you see out here is accidental."

"Every day, every project, we learn something new," she added.

Every day, they worry about safety and every day brings them one step closer to completion.

After the tour of the massive project, Hellman said, "It benefits everyone to get this job done faster and the roadway open again. but we want to do it right. We want it to have longevity as a project so we don't have to come back to it."