Bids close Monday, November 16, for the contract to clear the logjam beneath the Currier Street bike path bridge over the Hocking River in Athens, Athens County Planner Connor LaVelle told the Athens County Board of Commissioners, the Athens Messenger reported.
The job comes with conditions shaped by the river itself. The bid requires the winning contractor to remove the logs in a way that does not allow them to drift downstream, and to separate and recycle any solid waste caught in the jam, LaVelle explained, according to the Athens Messenger’s report of the commissioners’ meeting.
Interest in the work has been strong. LaVelle told the commissioners there has been significant interest from both local firms and outside firms — including a firm from Indiana whose representatives met with him on Saturday, the Messenger reported.
The cleanup is also, on the county’s account, a favor to the neighbor downstream. Commissioner Charlie Adkins, the board’s vice president, asked whether clearing the logjam would cause erosion problems along the bank near the Kanawha River Railroad, the Messenger reported. LaVelle told him clearing the jam would slow the river’s flow and prevent further erosion. “You’re expanding where the water can go. So, right now, the way that it is, it’s sort of pushing it all towards the railroad’s berm,” LaVelle said, as reported by the Athens Messenger. “So, it should benefit them.”
One piece of the bank’s condition is not the county’s to fix: as of Saturday, the railroad had not yet addressed the erosion along its own bank, LaVelle told the commissioners, according to the Messenger.
What happens next is Monday’s bid deadline: once bids close November 16, the county can evaluate the proposals and move toward awarding the clearing contract, with the railroad’s separate bank work still outstanding. Details in this report are from the Athens Messenger.
Photo: Tim Kiser, CC BY-SA
[…] For Pike County, the stakes are generational. The Portsmouth Site’s enrichment mission defined the local economy for decades, and its cleanup has employed generations of workers since. The buildings now coming down are the physical plant of that Cold War mission — the department’s demolition work is what converts a fenced cleanup site into open, reusable ground, which is why the teardown, unglamorous as it looks, is the project’s true first phase. A hub that pairs power generation with a major computing center would keep the site at the center of the county’s economy — this time building on the land instead of remediating what was left on it. It is the same corner of southern Ohio where residents are weighing what new energy development means for their communities, a debate NewsForce247 followed this fall in the Hocking River cleanup work in neighboring Athens County. […]