CLAVERACK — Fish and Game Club Road closed to traffic Wednesday and will remain closed through Aug. 4 as crews replace a culvert.
The $5.1 million project includes resurfacing and reconstructing part of the roadbed, providing shoulders to widen the road, making improvements to traffic lanes and realigning the intersection at Tishauder Road.
The project will be funded from three sources: Eighty percent from federal funds, 15% from the New York state Department of Transportation and 5% from Columbia County.
The detours during the road closures include state Route 217, state Route 23 and state Route 9H. To prepare for the construction, local schools and emergency services were notified about the alternate routes weeks in advance.
Columbia County Public Works Commissioner Ray Jurkowski spoke about the alternate routes available to motorists.
“There is a detour that’s taking place that took effect this morning and will remain in place for the next four weeks while a culvert is being replaced located just to the west of Tishauser Road,” Jurkowski said Wednesday.
A culvert is a tunnel carrying a stream under a road or railway. The replacement is important because culvert failures can be a hazard to drivers. They can cause increased traffic congestion, require expensive repairs and cause great harm to local plant wildlife.
Once a culvert is replaced, it can last up to 25 to 50 years, depending on the density of the metal and the surrounding conditions.
Jurkowski said the culvert replacement is needed because of the age and durability of the existing pipes.
“Previously, there’s an existing water course that goes underneath the roadway that was carried under the road by three service culvert pipes, and those pipes were slightly undersized, but also they were problematic and prone to clogging and cleaning out periodically,” Jurkowski said. “The work that is taking place because of the closure is replacing those three pipes with a larger precast concrete box culvert. It’s a larger structure.”
This will help the town of Claverack because it will improve the infrastructure and adequately prepare the town to deal with intense storms.
“The previous metal pipes that were underneath that roadway were aged and had a useful life,” Jurkowski said. “With the new culvert, we’re updating the infrastructure and providing a larger one. As climate change continues, and as we continue to get bigger storms, the culvert will be able to cast the storm flow associated with larger storms.”