Rains slow repairs on river trail
Rome crews can’t start stabilizing the environmentally sensitive area until the Oostanaula returns to its normal level.
With another week of stormy weather ahead, a washout on Rome’s river trail behind Chieftains Museum that opened up the first week of December is only likely to get worse.
“We’ve been waiting for the water to go down,” Public Works Director Chris Jenkins said. “If it would quit raining, we plan to bring in rocks to stabilize the area underneath (and repair the hole).”
The trail along the Oostanaula River is in an environmentally sensitive area. The city is limited in what actions it can take within the buffer zone by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regulations and state law.
“That’s the river, right under it . ... We need to be 25 feet from the resting pool (location) and it’s not back to that level yet,” Jenkins told members of the city’s public works committee last week.
They’re also prohibited from bringing in “outside” sand, which could contaminate the protected habitat. Jenkins said they’ve been collecting sand from other areas along the riverbank and storing it
until work can start.
“We want to try and reestablish this first, but we’re looking at trying to move the trail in,” he said.
This is the second time in recent years that erosion has affected the popular hiking and biking trail in that area. A shift away from the riverbank would put it on Chieftains property, which is owned by the Junior Service League.
Floyd County recorded 10.33 inches of rain in December — nearly 6 inches above average for the month — according to the National Weather Service’s annual climate report for 2018. The total for the year was 67.07 inches, listed in the report as more than 15 inches above the “normal” rainfall in Rome.
The trend continued in January, with a total of 6.82 inches recorded compared to the 4.82 inches considered normal for the month by the NWS. The latest report also states that, “Based on the Climate Prediction Center’s February outlook ... far North Georgia has a 50 percent to 60 percent chance of above normal precipitation.”
The forecast for today is mostly sunny with a high around 55, but the chance of rain starts increasing tonight.
Tuesday brings an 80-percent chance of showers after 1 p.m. The latest NWS outlook is predicting multiple rounds of heavy weather through Friday with 5 to 7 inches of rain falling across Northwest Georgia.