Genesee County owns and maintains all 350 or so culverts in all of the towns and villages in the county and every year, there are a few that need to be replaced.
After a few years of trying to secure funding, New York State has approved a $625,000 grant to replace a culvert on South Street Road just south of Exchange Street.
That's not only an inconvenience to residents in the area, but it's going to disrupt travel to Le Roy Sr./Jr. High School.
Laura Wadhams, assistant county engineer, presented the culvert replacement plans to the Le Roy Central School District Board of Education on Tuesday so they could have a better understanding of how and when the work will proceed and to begin the process of approval for the district to deed a tiny portion of land next to the culvert for an easement.
Construction will begin in June, just after the end of the school year, and should be completed in October.
The culvert being replaced is made of corrugated metal pipes and was installed in 1960. It won't last much longer -- meaning a possible collapse of the roadway -- and it is subject to clogging.
"We're going to realign the culvert slightly to make the stream do what water wants to do, so we don't try to force water to do something it doesn't want to do, because that doesn't end well for us," Wadhams said. "We're going to put it on a little bit of a skew, add new headwalls, and that'll actually help with a lot of the debris that gets caught up on the culvert."
The new cull will have a 10-foot span, a four-foot rise, and be 47 feet long, compared to 53 feet for the current culvert.
The county will need to acquire more land from the school district for the placement of protection measures. Wadhams said the county is asking that the district provide the land as a gift to the county, which is an item for a future school board agenda.
During construction, that area of South Street Road will be restricted to local traffic only, and access to the school will be available only from the south side.
The detour will take people down Asbury Road and Harris Road to connect with Route 5 and is approximately 4.9 miles long.
Photos provided by the County Highway Department.
