NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council approved on Tuesday a project to fix problems with the Mine Road culvert.
"The Grandview industrial ditch, or the GVI, collects and conveys stormwater from the city to the Arkansas River," said Assistant City Engineer Jessica Lowe. "Where the GVI crosses under Mine Road, several culverts have collapsed, requiring the closure of Mine Road. This is the back entrance for the Hutchinson Salt Company and it's the main entrance to the salt mine for semis that deliver a large portion of the Midwest's road de-icing and agricultural salt. The crossing is a critical piece of infrastructure and it needs to be fixed. Existing culverts are corrugated metal pipes and they haven't withstood the harsh environment near the salt mine well."
The new project gets away from metal as much as possible and uses a new reinforced box culvert with an alternate bid to add more corrosion protection over and above that provided by the concrete alone.
"In the base bid, there is some corrosion protection that goes on every box, actually most bridges, called a bridge backwall protection system," Lowe said. "It's like a felt sheathing or something that lays out and protects the bridge deck from the de-icing salt that can get in. The alternate was, like a PVC layer, like a sheet that you can lay down on top of that. It's just, that way, we get two layers of corrosion protection, because the environment is corrosive and we have all the salt trucks coming back and forth, just to protect that box."
They are also taking additional precautions to prevent corrosion in the building of the bridge itself.
"Typically, with bridges, you put epoxy coated reinforcing only in the deck and the rest of the bridge gets regular black steel," Lowe said. "For this particular bridge, we're putting epoxy coated reinforcing everywhere, because we don't want to have to talk about this again. This is going to be, hopefully, a well protected structure for the next 75 years."
The low bidder on the project was Klaver Construction at $1,743,341.60. This project will be funded by the Stormwater Utility Fee.