A recent Memorial Day weekend storm created a small erosion on a creek bank between Edgewood and Crestview Hills on Horsebranch Road, and the cities are working together to get it fixed.
“It’s not gigantic,” said Crestview Hills City Administrator Alex Mattingly at a Thursday evening city council meeting. “It’s near a country road, and it’s close enough that we need to take action to ensure the road is safe for the future. It’s not unsafe, but anytime there is a landslide near the edge of the road, it could get worse.”
Edgewood is taking the lead on an emergency certificate of agreement with Crestview Hills to fix it.
The city administrator of Edgewood Brian Dehner said he does not consider this a landslide, but rather erosion that can be addressed with pylons and maybe a lane closure.
“When I think of a landslide, I think of a hill or mountain falling into itself,” Dehner said.
“This was a failure on Horsebranch Road.”
The contract states that “per a 1992 agreement between the two cities, the City of Edgewood take on all Horsebranch Road repairs.”
Mattingly told the councilmen that the repairs were needed, mostly for proactive reasons as the area heads into the rainy season.
“This is probably more out of caution than anything,” Mattingly said. “But this is an emergency repair so we need to take quotes.”
The lowest bid was put in by JTM Smith Construction Inc. for $142,900. Mattingly said the two cities will split the cost evenly. Because Edgewood is taking the lead, no action was needed by Crestview Hills.
Dehner said Friday that JTM Smith Construction and his city are working on a contract and will expedite the emergency project.
“There’s a section there with a (metal) plate covering up where the creek bank failed,” Dehner said. “We’ve known that this will continue eroding and so we’re trying to fix that and get it done.”
The plan for this project is to insert pylons into the earth’s bedrock, to help stop erosion. Dehner said he didn’t expect road closures during the project.
“Maybe a lane,” he said. “A lane closure but not a road closure during normal working hours. It’s five feet, eight feet off the road and I think it’s probably less than four feet wide.”