Southern Utah News Articles
Top Stories for November 30, 2011
Old crossing to the Ranchos is now the new crossing
Jones and DeMille Engineering treated the Kanab City Council and townspeople at the November 22 meeting, to a presentation on the construction of the new Kanab Creek Drive bridge across Kanab Creek into the Ranchos.
The bridge was opened that night, but closed the next morning to re-pour a section of the sidewalk on the north side and ongoing fence work. It is open to traffic now and is an obvious improvement over the old bridge, which consisted of three barrels capable of handling 2554 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water. The new single 25-foot diameter multi-plated pipe is rated at 9,073 cfs, which reportedly can handle a 500 year flood event.
The project began September 1, after the Southwestern flycatcher that nests in the river corridor had migrated, and was scheduled to be completed by November 1, but a couple of setbacks put it behind three weeks.
The first of these occurred October 1, when a storm event flooded the river bed, washing out part of the culvert base, putting the project behind two weeks, and costing the contractor $45,000 in lost time.
Two days after finishing the work on the outlet (downstream) side of the culvert, a three foot wall of water washed through the project after it was released from the reservoir north of Kanab by a Kane County Water Conservancy employee intent on washing out some obstructionist beavers. If it wasn’t for some “heads up” warning from an upstream observer, two bridge workers might have joined the beavers in the Grand Canyon. As it turned out, only the footing at the outlet was washed out, delaying the completion by another week.
Even with the setbacks, the bridge was built $125,000 under the budgeted bid of over a million dollars, and the city will save about half of this amount.
After approved absentee ballots (those received by the Friday before the November 8 election) were counted in house, the official final election results of the city council races were posted by the city. No changes occurred, with Kirt Carpenter receiving a total of 784 votes, Cheryl Brown 773, Joe B. Wright 736, Tony Chatterley 700, Jim Walls 677 and Victor Cooper 652. It was a close race with only a 3% difference in total votes between the highest and lowest vote getter.
The council voted to forego receiving $500 from the state as payment for the .436 acres of city-owned land used in the realignment of Hancock Rd. at the intersection with Hwy 89 north of Kanab. It was felt that improved access to the city water wells in the area more than compensated the city for the small parcel.