By Richard Stradling
The N.C. Department of Transportation and its contractors will be able to mine stone from Pisgah National Forest to help rebuild Interstate 40 through the Pigeon River Gorge in Western North Carolina, federal officials said Thursday.
The stone is needed to rebuild a four-mile section of the highway that was partially washed away last September by flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. The quarry on federal land nearby could save millions of dollars and shave as much as three years off the time it takes to a reconstruct the main highway connection with Tennessee.
The swollen Pigeon River scoured land out from underneath the eastbound lanes of I-40 , causing pavement, shoulders and guardrails to disappear. Rebuilding them will entail bringing in tons of stone to recreate the roadbed.
The closest commercial quarry is more than 20 miles away in Tennessee, said Joey Hopkins, the N.C. Secretary of Transportation. Hauling the stone that far would put thousands of trucks onto the highway, which reopened as a two-lane road on the surviving westbound lanes in February .
NCDOT hopes to reconstruct the eastbound lanes in two years. But Hopkins said bringing in stone from Tennessee over a congested section of highway “could add two, maybe three years onto that timeframe.”
The quarry on national forest land, which I-40 passes through, would be one to three miles from where it’s needed. NCDOT and its contractors would build a causeway along the river, allowing them to bring in stone without getting on the highway.
NCDOT is still sampling rock in several locations to find a place that would provide enough for the road project, said spokesman Jamie Kritzer. The forest service agreed Wednesday to turn the sites over to the Federal Highway Administration, which is expected to soon issue an easement to allow NCDOT to start removing stone, Kritzer said.
“It’s important to note that state and federal environmental permits will be needed before NCDOT can construct a bridge to the sites where the rock is located or start any quarrying operations,” he wrote in an email. “The date to start any quarrying has not yet been determined.”
‘Major milestone’ in Helene recovery in NC
The Federal Highway Administration announced the quarry arrangement on Thursday. The agency said it worked with the U.S. Forest Service to compress a permitting process that normally takes six months into a little more than one.
NCDOT has estimated that rebuilding just the four miles of I-40 on its side of the state line will cost about $1 billion. The Federal Highway Administration says quarrying stone nearby could save hundreds of millions.
Before Helene, I-40 was the busiest connection between North Carolina and Tennessee, handling 26,000 cars and trucks a day on average. After shoring up the surviving westbound lanes, transportation departments in both states converted them to two-way traffic on either side of the state line.
The lanes are 11 feet wide, a foot narrower than the interstate standard. With only a 9-by-9 inch concrete barrier and hard plastic bollards separating oncoming cars and trucks, the speed limit is 35 mph.
