Aid secured for Eastside Road slides

PRIEST RIVER — Bonner County is securing federal and state disaster relief funding to repair three landslides on Eastside Road that occurred in 2017.

The slides occurred at mileposts 10, 11 and 11.2, according to county staff Engineer Matt Mulder.

“Those three landslides qualified for state and federal relief funds. We have been working through that process for two years now and we still have another year and a half to go before the repairs happen,” Mulder told county commissioners on Tuesday.

The county worked with the state of Idaho’s Local Highway Technical Assistance Council to find a consultant, David Evans & Associates, to design the project, The design cost is estimated at $590,732 and the total project cost is estimated at $1.8 million.

The county’s match for the project is $135,456, which works out to 7 percent of the total project cost, Mulder said.

County commissioners unanimously approved putting up the money for the local match on Tuesday.

In other westside transportation news, the county awarded a $32,917 contract to C.E. Kramer Crane & Contracting to bolster the bridge over Blanchard Creek on Poirier Road.

Mulder said a large section of an abutment wing wall failed in the 1990s and a series of gabion baskets — metal cages filled with rock — were used to prop up the section of road and keep it from falling into the creek. But over time, erosion caused the baskets to settle.

“It’s pulling material out from underneath and behind the gabion baskets and we’ve been looking at how do a more permanent repair so we don’t lose the road,” Mulder said.

Mulder said the abutment will be shored up with a Hilfiker retaining wall and anchors will be placed into the rock and soil to secure it.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.