GUILD, Tenn. - The now nearly $19.2 million Tennessee Department of Transportation slide repair project begun just over a year ago on U.S. Highway 41 in Marion County has been delayed again, thanks to another wintertime swamping by Mother Nature.
A change order for additional repairs was awarded May 28. The project now is estimated to be completed at the end of October.
The current project is the largest and most expensive of the state's attempts at a permanent - or at least a longer lasting - fix for the mile-long piece of Highway 41 on the highly mobile north slope of slide-prone Aetna Mountain. TDOT has waged a decadeslong battle with the mountain and rains caused by heavy rains.
The project was supposed to have been completed by the end of November 2019, but ongoing damage from rains keeps forcing more repairs. Problems began in December 2018, repairs started in January 2019 and bids were opened in May for the current project. Dement Construction was awarded the project with a $16 million bid in May 2019.
But heavy rain keeps dealing out damage, and the project suffers.
TDOT spokeswoman Jennifer Flynn said rainfall in January and February totaled more than 18 inches in Marion County, after a very wet fall in 2019.
"This caused noticeable cracks in the centerline of the roadway in two different additional locations within the project limits," Flynn said. "The department monitored the movement at both locations and determined that both slides should be repaired and added to the scope of work included in this project."
That meant that to complete the project's first phase, the new damage had to fixed, and that led to a $1.6 million change order to add the additional slides to the first phase of the current project, Flynn said. That also meant work on the project slowed while repairs went through the design process. Now the total cost of the project stands at $19,176,567.90, according to TDOT. Phase 2 work will start when the first phase is finished.
"[T]he contractor currently is working on the additional slides so Phase 2 of the project can begin," Flynn said. "We received final approval to proceed with these additional repairs last Thursday."
The second phase can begin as soon as the first is complete.
State engineers are glad to be able to resume quickly.
"We are pleased that we were able to include these two additional slide sites in this project," TDOT Region 2 Director Joe Deering said Thursday. "Because we had the specialty geotechnical contractor already on the project, they were prepared to go to work as soon as we were able to execute all the necessary documents and receive final approval for the change order."
It's not the first time, even in recent years, that the same stretch of road has buckled and collapsed from underground water, and as recently as 2013 the state shelled out $909,000 for a repair project very near the current one that was one of the first uses of the soil nailing technique being used on the current project and on mountainside road projects all over Tennessee.
In 2014, the newly repaired section and other areas that hadn't been really bad were beginning to crack and collapse. TDOT officials at the time expressed doubts as to how "permanent" any fix was on Aetna Mountain. In the years between 2014 and 2018, several smaller repairs were made.
"Between January 2014 and January 2018, our maintenance forces have spent approximately $100,000 on activities such as in-house resurfacing, manual spot patching, milling, cleaning and reshaping ditches, slide and settlement repair and drainage structure repair," Flynn said in April 2019. Add to that a paving project in October 2013 that cost $910,000, another in September 2014 that cost $925,000 and the tally nears $2 million.
In its early days Highway 41 was the only federal highway making its way through the Tennessee River Gorge. It remains an important route now serving as a detour when an incident forces the closure of Interstate 24. That means it must be maintained to carry heavy interstate traffic.
Longtime residents of Aetna Mountain and its communities barely acknowledge the repeated projects, including Randall Sullivan, owner of Sullivan's Store, across from the boat ramp in the Riverside community not far from the project.
"When I was a kid 70-something years ago, it was falling in," Sullivan said last July. He's seen the highway wax and wane in use and doesn't mind when it's quieter now.
"When they opened up the interstate, it was so quiet I couldn't sleep," he said.
Flynn said that once the new slides are repaired, a new lane will be constructed on top of the repaired areas and traffic switched to that lane, which will be nearest the river. The contractor will start phase 2 in late August.
"After phase 2 is completed the roadbed will be rebuilt and pavement installed to reopen the road to two lanes," Flynn said.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton or at www.facebook.com/benbenton1.