Donegal shuts down worn road
Delashawn Road near Claysville was closed due to damage from heavy truck traffic, but it will soon reopen.
Delashawn Road near Claysville was closed due to damage from heavy truck traffic, but it will soon reopen.
Donegal Township has temporarily restricted traffic on a road leading to a compressor station under construction – effectively halting construction.
Delashawn Road is open only to residential motorists because of the poor condition of the pavement. The road is paved for only a quarter-mile, from the intersection with Old National Pike to Interstate Village, an 80-unit mobile home complex. The rest of Delashawn, to its intersection with Beham Ridge Road, is dirt.
“We have not often closed roads. It would take a pretty drastic situation to do that,” township Supervisor Doug Teagarden said.
He and fellow supervisor Dave Ealy, head of Donegal’s road department, said the paved section has been worn down dramatically by trucks heading to the site of Columbia Midstream’s future Gibraltar Compressing Station, and returning with tons of earth destined for the Arden landfill. Ealy said the trucks, from Columbia Gibraltar Gathering, have been using Delashawn for about a month.
“They have taken more than 700 tons on that road, and they still have 13 days of hauling dirt out,” Ealy said. “The road is not capable of handling that much truck traffic.”
“That road,” Teagarden concurred, “is marginal at best.”
He and Ealy said when Columbia proposed the project, the company said there would be truck traffic, but did not specify that heavy loads of earth would be transported.
“We weren’t apprised of that,” said Teagarden, whose municipality does not have zoning, but may be voting on a zoning plan in a couple of weeks.
“Someone said, ‘Pull their permit,’ but we don’t have a permitting process. We said ‘OK’ to their plans. We don’t have bargaining chips. We don’t have a process for conditional uses.”
Both supervisors, however, agreed that the township has had a solid working relationship with Columbia. “They’ve been excellent neighbors for years,” Teagarden said.
In that vein, Ealy said, attorneys and representatives of both sides met Friday and agreed to a solution. He said he was told Columbia would pay to rent a grader, and pay two Donegal road crew members in a township truck to help spread a stone surface over the pavement. As of late morning, he wasn’t aware of plans to repave.
“They’re paying 100 percent for this,” Ealy said, adding work could begin today and be completed in two days.
Columbia spokesman Scott Castleman said in a prepared statement Friday: “In terms of activity on Delashawn Road, we are walking the road with Donegal officials this afternoon in an attempt to develop a strategy moving forward.
“We are listening to concerns voiced by township officials and neighbors of Columbia Midstream Gibraltar Compressor Station. … We pride ourselves on being a good neighbor in the areas we live and work.”
Aside from the mobile home village, Delashawn Road is sparsely populated. There are a few homes at each end, near Old National Pike and Beham Ridge Road. The compressor station being built, and targeted to open in the fall, is essentially in the middle, an isolated area. School buses are limited to the paved section of Delashawn.
“Delashawn, at some point years ago, was open at each end and closed in the middle because it was impassable,” Teagarden said.
The issue, at least temporarily, may be resolved soon – in a safe manner.
“We’re not fighting with (Columbia),” Teagarden said, “but we can’t have roads like this.”