By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
Motorists soon will not have to detour around a project on Fourth Street just east of Murphy Boulevard.
Reopening of the street section where the city is completing a stormwater drainage project had been planned for mid-November. But a soil-stability problem was encountered, causing a delay in completion. Plans now call for reopening the street section by Dec. 7.
Installation of a larger box culvert and a bridge over the culvert began Sept. 1. Rainy days in October slowed the work, said Dan Johnson, a city engineer.
“We had more than normal rainy days, and that’s held them back on making concrete pours,” Johnson said.
In November, when workers started to backfill around the new culvert, the contractor realized that the soil was not compacting enough to support the street, causing more work and delays in completion.
The project cost $939,000. Federal funds for bridge replacement administered by the Missouri Department of Transportation are being used to pay 80 percent of the total. Snyder Construction Co. has the contract.
Once that project is finished, work will start a block away at Fifth Street between Murphy Boulevard and Cox Avenue, where another culvert is to be replaced to help drainage in the area.
That work will temporarily close Murphy Boulevard, and the closing likely will start about a week after Fourth Street is reopened, Johnson said. “We can’t have Murphy Boulevard and Fourth Street closed at the same time,” he said.
But a portion of Fifth Street will never reopen.
The City Council has approved a plan to permanently close the street between Murphy Boulevard and Cox Avenue. Johnson told the council that in order to make a culvert wide enough to effectively reduce flooding at Fifth Street and Cox Avenue, a bridge would have to be built over the culvert at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
He said none of the businesses along that block of Fifth Street face the street, so closing that section would not present a problem for them. The advantage will be avoiding the cost of building a bridge, he said.
But the city will proceed with replacing the culvert on Murphy Boulevard. That will cost $791,000, with 80 percent coming from federal funds. Snyder also is the contractor for that part of the project.
Sales tax projects
The projects at Fourth and Fifth streets and Murphy Boulevard were on the list of projects promised to voters when they passed a quarter-cent sales tax for parks and stormwater projects in 2001.
