SEDGWICK – The Maine Department of Transportation will close a section of Route 15 this week in order to replace a deteriorating culvert.

Transportation officials expect the road closure to last for three days, Tuesday through Thursday, Aug. 22-24, and motorists will have to seek alternate routes during that time.

The DOT already has erected detour signs, and warning signs on roads approaching the work site are alerting local motorists to the planned closure.

Crews have been working at the site for about a week in advance of the closure. The project will replace a metal drainage culvert that directs Black Stream under Route 15.

The site is about three-tenths of a mile north of the Brooksville-Sedgwick town line and a short distance north of the intersection of Routes 15 and 176 in Sedgwick.

DOT staff inspected the site Sunday morning and determined that heavy rains during the night had not damaged any of the preparatory work that crews had already done. Because of the deteriorating culvert, the stream has overflowed the road in the past, usually during spring runoff.

According to Dennis Lovely at DOT’s Bangor office, crews now are ready to remove the existing culvert and replace it with two 66-inch-wide, 64-foot-long concrete culverts. The larger culverts are expected to handle the overflow during heavy rains.

“When we’re dealing with work of that magnitude, it’s safer, more cost-effective and quicker to just close the road to traffic than it is to try to maintain traffic through the work area,” Lovely said in a press release.

Although the department expects to reopen the road by the end of the week, crews will still have work to complete, Lovely said.

Drivers can expect one-lane travel on the road during the day, with flaggers directing traffic, until the project is completed. Both lanes of the road will be open at night.