Sloughing closes part of 61 South|[5/12/05]

Published 12:00 am Thursday, May 12, 2005

Traffic on U.S. 61 South between Signal Hill Lane and Warrenton Road was reduced to two lanes this morning because of continued sloughing of the southbound lanes there.

For more than a year, engineers with the Mississippi Department of Transportation have been looking for the cause of a slide under a half-mile stretch of the roadway there. Motorists are now being detoured to the northbound lanes while that work continues.

A spokesman for MDOT said the lanes will be closed until permanent repairs are made, but could not say how long that could take. Access to the highway from Wigwam Road and Old Cain Ridge Road has also been blocked.

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District Engineer Walter Lyons blamed winter rains for the failure that has caused sinking and buckling along a 2,800-foot stretch of the roadway.

“Movement of the slide, primarily in the southbound lanes, has accelerated greatly,” Lyons said.

MDOT engineers met last month to discuss plans for repairs to that area of the highway that has been moving for nearly 30 years. They have also completed a geologic survey of the area that began last summer.

Stabilization and repairs have been estimated to cost up to $5 million. Two separate, smaller slides to the south of the area were also repaired during the early to mid-1970s.

Those repairs cost about $1.5 million.

The road, which replaced Warrenton as the path of U.S. 61, was built by cutting down the top of a ridge, Signal Hill, and placing the fill in a valley where the lanes are sliding. Subterranean drains were placed in the area, but the road has continued to slough.