Ivanhoe council hears report on Charmaine issues

IVANHOE – Charmaine Dam is “a big, important part of our everyday life,” Ivanhoe Mayor Skip Blackstone said, and the city is “doing everything we can to get [issues with the dam] resolved as quickly as possible.”

Blackstone gave updates on the dam during the regular meeting of the Ivanhoe City Council on last Friday evening.

The dam has been closed to all traffic since April. The spillway valve was opened in order to take pressure off the structure while it has been evaluated. This took place prior to the series of heavy storms, which began in April, in anticipation of damage.

Blackstone said that the valves will remain open, and he gave an update on the void found in the spillway.

“We’re all concerned about that and going to get that addressed,” he said. “Our goal is to get everything stable and safe to reopen the roadway.”

The city had met with three different companies to look at options to address the voids in the structure, ranging from foam and flowable grout to stabilized sand. Blackstone said the city is awaiting the proposals from the three companies, with the numbers, and will have a workshop to determine the best course of action to bring before the council.

Blackstone added that the good news is that the city is approaching the end of its fiscal year budgeting cycle and has monies in the budget to work on the dam. “Next year, we’ll be able to continue the work needed into the next fiscal year,” he said.

He added that the problems with the dam are “not nearly as severe” as engineers had previously led the city officials to believe, however the engineers do not want to commit to anything because there are too many unknowns under the surface of the dam.

Road project updates

Blackstone said that he recently met with Pct. 1 Commissioner Joe Blacksher and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) District Engineer Martin Gonzalez about Tolar Road.

He said that roughly a thousand residents, on two separate occasions, over a two-week period, were stranded along the thoroughfare.

Gonzalez said that TxDOT, which is working on a hurricane evacuation route, further south, along US 69, declared the situation an emergency, and believes money is in the TxDOT budget to rebuild the bridge along Tolar Road and widen it to two lanes. Blacksher said if that is done, he will see the road is finished from the gate to the highway in Hillister, and if the property owner will sell the property south of there, shift the intersection a bit south. This would create a more traditional intersection, as opposed to an offset one.

Blackstone also reported that there is money left in the city’s bond fund, which could be about $25K, to pave Camelot Drive from Durwood to the back gate.

“The plan is to have a very clean, well-made road to a safe intersection to give us another way out of the city,” he said.

The city is working on Sir Henry and Mill Creek, and he added if that part of the road would have been done, everyone on the peninsula would have had an easy way out. The weather has hampered some of the work progress.