New support walls along Highway 50 to be built near Zephyr Cove

In effort to combat erosion and to maintain its roads, Nevada Department of Transportation employees are installing new support walls along Highway 50 between Zephyr Cove and Bourne Meadow.

The $4.5 million project, which also involves drainage improvements and erosion controls, should be finished by October. That means traffic will be limited to one lane each way weekdays all summer.

Work on a $2.6 million project on Highway 50 north of Zephyr near Cave Rock also restarted last week. NDOT began to install support walls there in summer 2002 and hopes to have the project completed by July 4. Construction may require traffic to be limited to one lane for about two weeks, said Scott Magruder, NDOT spokesman.

"That's a lot of road work" scheduled, he said. "It's good news because it involves the two main roads into Tahoe."

Magruder said all the projects are funded by a mix of state dollars and money generated by state's Tahoe Bond Act.

Upcoming NDOT work on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe includes:

n $300,000 worth of repairs to the east side of Highway 50 at the Cave Rock tunnel scheduled for this summer.

n A $1.6 million erosion control and drainage project along Highway 50 from Kahle Drive to Elks Point Road that will begin in the spring.

n A $5.5 million project to relocate a sewer line and install support walls along Highway 50 from Bourne Meadow to Skyland in the spring.

n A $5.4 million project to repave seven miles of road and drainage improvements on the backside of Kingsbury Grade from Daggett Summit to Carson Valley. Some work is scheduled to start in July, but the repaving will not begin until 2004.