County board hears concerns over roads, bridges

McCOOK, Neb. — Red Willow County commissioners talked about roads and bridges at their weekly meeting Monday morning.

Drivers are concerned with the condition of “the lake road” in eastern Red Willow County and a country road that seems to be used “as a race track” in western Red Willow County. And reports on 2019 bridge inspections indicate that bridges need new load postings and attention to debris and erosion.

Potholes, standing water and crumbling shoulders worry drivers — and rightly so, according to commissioners — on Road 407, the county road from Highway 6&34 north to Frontier County, past Harry Strunk Lake. The road is locally called “the lake road.” “It’s shoddy, at best,” commission chairman Earl McNutt said, adding that for what the county spent on work last summer — $72,000 — it should not have deteriorated as it did.

Last spring, in an effort to delay armor coating 5 1/2 miles of the lake road for a year, commissioners agreed to a suggestion from its road construction company to apply a top-coating of asphalt millings — a process that “looked like it was going to work at first,” McNutt said. However, because the millings may not have had enough oil in the application and because of the heavy traffic load on the road, the road hasn’t weathered the winter. McNutt said, “We’ve used millings before, and we’ve never had these problems.”

Commissioner Steve Downer, through whose district the lake road runs, said the county has tried lots of things to maintain and improve the road over the years.

To begin with, “it should be a state road, not a county road,” Downer said, as drivers use it as a bypass to Highway 18 and as a direct route to the lake. Nebraska Game and Parks overlaid it many years ago, he said, but has never maintained it regularly. As county commissioner since 2000, Downer said he thinks he was the first to crack seal the road.

Last spring, the county hired Figgins Construction, of Red Cloud, to lay asphalt millings “to hold off a year on the armor coating.” After a heavy rain during application, Figgins “touched up some spots,” McNutt said, but, he said, he thinks the millings may not have had enough oil and they’ve crumbled, particularly along the shoulders. “Figgens needs to make it right,” McNutt said, and Downer agreed that fresh millings need to be applied, followed by armor coating.

Downer will talk with Figgens representatives and determine where they and the county need to go from here.

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Con Fielding, who lives on Road 715 southwest of McCook, said his road is treated “as a race track for some people,” and because it has no posted speed limits, law enforcement can’t address speeding problems.

Fielding said the road is still owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation because it originally — years ago — followed the Meeker irrigation canal. “I’d like the road to be a county road, all the way to Hitchcock County,” Fielding said.

McNutt said the county “inherited” the maintenance of the road, which is in his commissioner district, and he plans to put gravel on it this spring. He said that the speed limit on county roads is 55 miles an hour, “and common sense would tell you that you shouldn’t drive more than 35 miles an hour.”

McNutt said if the road officially became a county road, it wouldn’t have the standard 66-foot right-of-way because there’s not room for it. However, he said that “it’s not uncommon to have rights-of-way that are 40 feet, instead of 66 feet.”

McNutt said he’ll talk to Bureau representatives about the status of the road.

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Brian Langenberg’s inspection of 22 county bridges in 2019 indicates that five need new load limit postings, and, as usual each year, county road crews need to check signage, reflectors, debris, erosion, trees and basic maintenance on almost all of them.

Presenting Langenberg’s report to commissioners, Tara J. Drain, an office assistant in the Holdrege office of Miller & Associates, which provides the county with road superintendent services, said that Langenberg is adamant about correct load ratings.

A “special inspection” was done on bridge one mile south and 7 1/2 miles west of McCook because of local drivers’ concerns with its safety. Drain said Langenberg has determined it does need new, lower load postings and he recommends that it be posted with signs warning of a “One-Lane Bridge Ahead.”

Drain asked commissioners to take photographs of new load postings on bridges from both directions, and she will forward them on to the state.

McNutt said that the bridge should eventually be replaced with a box culvert, adding that it’s on a minimum maintenance road and therefore does not qualify for programs that help the county pay for bridge replacement.

Commissioners signed a resolution that certified the proper completion of a bridge replacement near Marion. A total of 55 percent of that project will be refunded to the county.

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In other action:

— Commissioners accepted a recommendation from the county’s planning and zoning commission to approve proposed revisions in the two-mile jurisdiction of the City of McCook. The change will eliminate a two-mile circle around McCook, with jurisdiction that follows section, half-section and quarter-section lines and established county roads.

In an interlocal agreement with the city, the city will retain building code jurisdiction for the Calabria subdivision northeast of McCook.

-- Commissioners signed a resolution to approve a “conservation easement” for Herbert and Julie Besler, who are selling the surface water rights on 94.5 acres of land irrigated from the Medicine Creek, in Red Willow County, to the Middle Republican Natural Resources District.

The purchase price for the surface water rights is $2,800 an acre, or $264,600 in total. The MRNRD is partially funding the purchase with a grant from the Department of Natural Resources.

Frontier County and MRNRD attorney Jon Schroeder of Curtis called the land “an oddball tract” and said that the sale and the retirement of irrigation rights will help Nebraska stay in compliance with the 1943 Republican River Compact that divvies up the river’s virgin water supply among Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.

McNutt said that downgrading the land from “irrigated” to “dryland” will have a minuscule affect on Red Willow County taxes.