Gouldsboro reopens road after washout

GOULDSBORO – State highway crews have put in four solid days of work and were hoping Friday to reopen to vehicular traffic a section of local road that washed out last week, according to a state highway official.

With the washout on East Schoodic Drive, which occurred Feb. 13, about six homes in the village of Bunkers Harbor have been accessible only through the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park. To enable the affected residents to get to and from their homes by car, and to allow the public to get to and from park facilities at Schoodic Point, Acadia officials temporarily have been permitting two-way traffic on Schoodic Loop Road, which normally is one-way into Bunkers Harbor.

Bob Carter, Maine Department of Transportation’s superintendent for the emergency project, said Friday morning that the old 4-foot-wide culvert under the road had been blocked, partly by wear and partly by animals that like to flood the swampy lowland on the west side of the road. He said that DOT crews had to unclog the culvert four times last summer because it had been dammed up by beavers.

Last week, it was blocked again, allowing heavy rains to flood the stream and then flow over the top of the pavement into the adjacent tidal inlet. That’s when approximately 75 feet of the northbound lane gave way, he said, some of it all the way to, and even underneath, the centerline of the road.

Carter said the DOT was aware that the old tar-covered metal culvert that ran under the road was not in good shape.

“It was scheduled to be replaced this summer,” he said. “The bottom rotted out.”

The new culvert is made of reinforced concrete, the superintendent said, and is 1 foot wider than the old one. He said highway crews would return in the spring to put a new coating of asphalt on the rebuilt section of road.

Bill Bell, who lives just north of the washout site on Wonsqueak Lane, waved across the gully to neighbor Joshua Edgerly on Friday morning while backhoes rebuilt the road in between. Bell, 78, said “muskrats” were partly to blame for the damage.

“They did a pretty good job last time,” Bell said. “Water was running over the road.”

Bell said that, while the washout was inconvenient for people on the south side, it at least was creating a little excitement in the neighborhood.

“If you have a really good dogfight, you’ll get half the town out,” Bell said.

According to Town Manager Eve Wilkinson, the road was opened up to traffic on Friday afternoon.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

460-6318