County launches three road reconstruction projects

Three Lake County roads will be rebuilt this summer, with funding awarded in 2022 from the American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program.

The projects include the entire length of Dublin Gulch Road from Hwy. 93 to 212, the first 1.3 miles of Moiese Valley Road, and the length of North Reservoir Road, which will include a parallel four-foot-wide bike/pedestrian path.

Riverside Contracting of Missoula was awarded the $9.2 million bid for the project in early March, competing against Knife River, LHC and Schellinger Construction.

According to project engineer Dustin Hover of WGM, all three projects will begin this spring, with completion slated for Dec. 1.

Hover expects the contractor will first begin installing culverts on Dublin Gulch and Moiese Valley roads prior to the irrigation season, and then start road construction.

Drivers can expect to encounter detours as the work progresses, although access will be maintained for local residents and emergency services.

According to Lake County Road Supervisor Jay Garrick, the alignment of Dublin Gulch won’t change much, but the 5.2-mile road’s surface will improve dramatically. “We’ve got rutting there that’s in excess of six inches in many places and that will all be gone,” he said.

He calls the improvements there “the biggest win for us” in terms of reducing maintenance costs. “You know, Dublin Gulch is horrible.”

Initially, plans had called for a new bridge over Post Creek, but those were scrapped due to expense and concerns about the floodplain in that area. Instead, the two existing large culverts will continue to carry the creek beneath the road, and be reinforced with riprap.

“If we took out those culverts, it would have changed the floodplain elevation and impacted adjacent properties,” Hover said.

The Moiese Valley project, which begins at the south end of the valley, primarily aims to elevate the road surface and improve drainage to alleviate annual flooding from adjacent wetlands.

North Reservoir Road, which ferries substantial truck traffic to and from the Lake County Transfer Station, “has its issues,” Garrick said. The reconstruction, in tandem with the bike path, “is going to be a great project for the community.”

He noted that the pedestrian path will include its own bridge over the canal that flows into Pablo Reservoir, instead of narrowing the path to cross the existing bridge.

Despite improvements, the road widths won’t increase much, if at all. “The take home message is we made it as wide as we could everywhere within the budget of the project and environmental and right-of-way constraints,” said Hover.

At its conclusion next December, the success of the project will be based on three measurements: Has the rideability improved? Is less maintenance required? Has useage increased?

From his perspective, Garrick is confident that “rideability” will be greatly enhanced, and maintenance costs “will be almost nil for at least a decade, if not several.”

That’s in large part because the existing surfaces are chip seal over an inferior substructure, “so they’re constantly being maintained and the surfaces are very rough.”

The reconstruction will improve the roads to the same standard as highways, “so they likely will not have seasonal weight restrictions and there’ll be a much smoother driving surface for years to come.”

To compare volume, traffic counts were conducted recently and will be measured again at the end of the project. “If they don't change significantly, that's not a big deal,” Garrick said.

Lake County was awarded the $12.9 million grant in 2022. WGM was hired through a bidding process in 2023 to design and oversee the project.

Lake County grant manager Billie Lee says getting to construction has been a long, complicated process that entailed working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes while also meeting federal requirements.

“What we learned during all of this is engineers become kind of like a marriage for a while,” she added. “In a good way.”

And that relationship will continue until the project is completed in December with engineers “constantly watching over it to make sure that all the criteria is met,” she said. At the same time, a representative will keep an eye out for the county’s interests, “so that we can spot any issues as they arise.”  

The public is encouraged to learn more about the project during an informational meeting with staff from Riverside, the Lake County Road Department and WGM at 6:30 p.m. March 26 at the Ronan Community Center. For more information, email jgarrick@lakemt.gov or call 406-883-7206.