City to Cover Repair Costs for By-path
Alpena city engineers are currently exploring their options to cover repair costs for the collapsed by-path at North Riverside Park. The by-path collapsed mid–July, and city officials say it will be out of commission until spring at the earliest.
“The cause was a high water situation and just natural wave action in the river. It eroded some of the rocks and rip rap underneath the foundation, and the foundation settled quite a bit,” says assistant city engineer Steve Shultz.
Engineers originally hoped insurance would cover the repair costs, but after finding out that wasn’t an option, its looking like the city will have to pay for repairs from general fund.
“We know that it has to get fixed. And so we forged ahead and put together some design plans. We are going to go ahead and bid it out, get some pricing on it because we would like to start it this fall and have it available for the spring time,” says Shultz.
City engineers have let contractors know the project will require work through the winter, and concrete will need to be poured in the spring to get the well–used by-path back in action as quickly as possible.
“This was constructed in 2007–2008 time frame, and has been a great addition to the river’s edge and a lot of people have used it,” Shultz says of the by-path.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the Corps of Engineers OK-ed a joint permit process for the new by-path, which was used the first time the path was built. But asked that the city submit a full permit application, which has since been completed. At this time, it’s looking like the by-path will be completely repaired by spring at the earliest.
