MINOT — The culvert on Shaw Hill Road that handles the waters of Indian Brook will be replaced this summer, thanks to a federal hazard mitigation grant.
Town Administrator Arlan Saunders told selectmen Monday that he had just received a letter from the Maine Emergency Management Agency’s hazard mitigation officer, JoAnne Mooney, informing him that funding for the project had received final approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The grant provides $38,507 of the project’s total $51,343 cost to replace two culverts with a single, 50-foot, 6- by 8-foot box culvert that’s open on the bottom to allow natural stream flow.
“The town’s match of $12,836 will be in the form of use of the Highway Department’s equipment and labor,” Saunders said.
Saunders said the work would be done in late July/early August, and is expected to take about 30 days.
“It has to be done before school starts. I figure we’ll have to close the road down completely for four days,” he said.
The existing culverts have proved inadequate to handle spring runoff, and periods of heavy rain at other times of the year have produced flows that cause Indian Brook to flood Shaw Hill Road.
The flooding has not only been a nuisance for local traffic — cutting off access to Minot Consolidated School from the northern part of town — but repairs have proven costly when portions of the road were washed out.
“That’s the idea behind the hazard mitigation grant program: Do it right and you’ll do it once,” Saunders said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
