Pricey repairs
Crews busy addressing ‘millions of dollars’ in damage to roads
Tuolumne County workers were out fixing and assessing more damage from recent storms, runoff, and flooding Thursday on Lime Kiln Road, Italian Bar Road, South Fork Road, and other locations — more evidence of winter storm season road repairs that are already costing millions in the Mother Lode.
The current dry spell, expected to last until Sunday, is a welcome break from this winter season’s seemingly relentless series of atmospheric river storms and low-altitude snowstorms, which have combined to unleash nearrecord amounts of runoff on already-saturated hillsides, slopes, cliffside roadways, and canyon-bottom roadways, Kim Macfarlane, the county Public Works director, said Thursday.
A crew of a half-dozen workers were busy Thursday morning at Lime Kiln Road near Outback Lane, where concentrated runoff recently undermined and washed out a narrow cross-section of Lime Kiln. Workers brought two excavators, a dump truck, and other county roads vehicles to the work site, where they did an emergency culvert replacement.
The closure on Lime Kiln Road was expected to be in place from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thursday.
Other new roads damage discovered Thursday included cracked pavement, slides, and supersaturation on Italian Bar Road outside Columbia and a slide near the 2400 block of South Fork Road in Twain Harte, Macfarlane said.
Tuolumne County has already estimated this winter’s storms have cost at least $18 million — with a significant portion of those costs already attributed to roads damage — and Tuolumne County and more than other California counties have already been included in state and federal emergency declarations.
Macfarlane didn’t have specific estimates for roads damage and repair costs Thursday. Instead she said, “We’re talking about millions of dollars of damage.”
“Even if we get reimburse
ments from Cal OES or FEMA, there are still local matches required,” she said. “For federal it’s 6.25%, and for state it’s 25%, and that adds up.”
Damage to roads and repairs for the 2017-2018 winter season storms cost the county $3.5 million for local matching funds alone, Macfarlane said.
As of noon Thursday, closed roads in Tuolumne County also included Alpine Lane access to Dragoon Gulch Trail parking in Sonora; another section of Italian Bar Road near Twain Harte; Mather Road; Old Priest Grade; Mi Wu Street; Red Hills Road; Sims Road; Hells Hollow Road at Big Creek; and Kelly Grademarshes Flat Road.
One-lane closures were in place for Campo Seco Road at Seco Terrace; and for Italian Bar Road one mile past the LDMA mining camp. Longterm closures remained in place on Marshes Flat Road: from Moccasin Ranch to Sunset Oaks; and on Wards Ferry Road from Richards Ranch Road to the last driveway on the Big Oak Flat side.
“We’ll do as much as we can to get most roads as soon as possible but there’s no way to estimate when we will have the actively sliding roads open,” Macfarlane said. “Wards Ferry Road will remain closed until sliding ceases and assessments can be done. Marshes Flat/kelly Grade might be one lane. Old Priest Grade has a slide and it’s closed. Italian Bar has new discoveries of supersaturated soggy areas and South Fork is a slide.”
Roads that have been closed and reopened by county Public Works in the past month of storms in February and March so far include Southgate Drive; Hope Lane; Ash Street; Middle Camp Road; Buchanan Road; Fish Hatchery Road; West Stockton Street; Fairview Lane; Bell Mooney Road; Mount Provo Road; Grizzly Road; and Twain Harte Drive.
Caltrans District 10 workers earlier this week reopened Highway 120, which got washed out, eroded, and undermined near Hardin Flat and Yosemite Lakes late last Friday or early Saturday. They did it with an emergency expenditure of $1 million to do the work, Caltrans District 10 communications staff said Thursday.
The last time a geotechnical engineer assessed Wards Ferry Road for the county was two weeks ago and there were two active slides there, Macfarlane said. Given the weather this past week it’s still actively sliding.
Macfarlane has been working in Tuolumne County since 2018 and this winter season so far is definitely challenging she’s dealt with. In 23 years living in California, she said, she can’t remember seeing so much snowfall statewide.
A study completed before this historically wet winter season and released in August 2022 ranked Tuolumne County roads as the worst in the state’s 58 counties. The 2020 California Statewide Local Streets and Roads Needs Assessment ranked counties on pavement condition.
“The storms this winter have definitely caused damage to our roads,” Macfarlane said. Nevertheless, she added, “in the past year or so our crews and engineers have done an incredible job getting more pavement on the ground and that improves our pavement condition index.”
The current roads and engineering teams in place for Tuolumne County have inherited a lot of damaged roads and deferred maintenance, and the engineers have responded by securing millions of dollars in grants dedicated to roads projects, Macfarlane said.
“People don’t realize, the roads superintendent has the most efficient and effective roads workers out doing preventive maintenance,” Macfarlane said. “They’ve been getting pavement on the ground, hot patching, ditch clearing, and cleaning out culverts in real weather, intense rains and snowfall at times, this winter. If not for that, the recent damage from storms would have been much worse.”
Macfarlane said she hopes visitors and residents of Tuolumne County realize how much the county workers are doing every day.
“You may not be aware of it, but our workers have been out there in their waders slogging in freezing temperatures to make sure our roads and airports are safer,” Macfarlane said, “and please be nice to them.”
From record-setting storms in December and January storms to the more recent February-march storms, Macfarlane paid tribute to county staff, including the county’s airport technicians, Blossom Scott-heim, supervising engineer; Mike Cognetti, the county’s roads superintendent and his proactive approach to preventive maintenance, like clearing ditches and culverts, improving drainage in known problem areas such as Parrotts Ferry Road, and working with county fleet services to ensure the crews and equipment were ready for the first storms; Emma Hawks, assistant to the department head for county Public Works, who has put in long hours taking calls from the public; and geographic information systems GIS technician Sam Zabell, who works to keep the county’s interactive road closure map up-to-date.
For more information about Tuolumne County roads, current conditions, and closures, visit the county’s interactive roads map online at https://bit. ly/3yku1dt.