STANWOOD — A lowland road just east of town is closed indefinitely after the bank supporting the pavement gave way during a November storm and subsequent flooding along the Stillaguamish River.
Norman Road needed repairs before the recent damage. It went down to a single lane in January after flooding last winter caused the bank to slump and the road to become unstable. A temporary repair was done in February with hopes of a permanent fix in the summer, but that fell through because of permitting and environmental requirements to work in the river. Now the goal is to get permits in time to fix the road this summer, said Owen Carter, Snohomish County’s deputy director of public works.
There’s a 500-foot crack in the pavement and some of it collapsed into the Stillaguamish near a bend in the river. Water routinely covers parts of Norman and other lowland roads during floods like the one Nov. 18.
“Basically one lane is gone,” Carter said. “The rain just saturated the sand and dirt under the road and it sloughed off into the river.”
The road is closed to all traffic for about a mile, from where it branches off Pioneer Highway to its intersection with 28th Ave. NW.
It’s too soon to know how much it will cost to fix the road, Carter said. County officials are consulting with the Army Corps of Engineers, wildlife experts and local Indian tribes on repair plans. They’ll likely use layers of an eco-friendly wrap to stabilize the bank. The soonest work could start is July.
“We have to wait until we can get in the river,” Carter said.
Detour signs are set up on either side of the closure. An average of 19 vehicles use Norman Road each hour, according to the county. That includes local traffic and trucks that carry farm supplies.
Jeremy Visser has run Natural Milk Dairy on Norman Road since 2007 and moved there with his family about two and a half years ago. The road closure has been a major inconvenience but he’s learned to work around it. The dairy has a private gravel road that cuts across his fields so he can get equipment and goods in and out.
There are at least four homes along Norman Road where vehicle access is limited by size and weight because of the closure, Visser said. UPS won’t deliver and school buses can’t get by. When he hosted a group of local students for a tour of the dairy, they had to walk about half a mile to get to the farm, he said.
“It’s unfortunate they weren’t able to repair the road” before the November flood, he said. “Now it’s a much bigger fix.”
People still try to navigate around the “Road Closed” signs but are forced to turn back before the washout. Visser tries to look on the bright side: he now lives on a very quiet street because there’s never too much traffic. And he counts himself fortunate that his property wasn’t damaged by the November storm and flood that tore into the road.
“It was just a sleepless night or two,” he said.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
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