Churchill receives grant money for roads

Churchill County will receive a portion of a $2 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant from the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief program.

The announcement of the grant came Wednesday.

The grant provides funds to repair federal-aid highways and roads on federal lands that have suffered serious damage as a result of natural disasters or catastrophic failures.

Churchill County will divide the funding along with Carson City, Douglas, Elko, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Lyon, Mineral, Pershing, Storey, and Washoe counties.

Title 23, U.S.C., Section 125, authorizes an Emergency Relief (ER) program within the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, for the repair or reconstruction of federal-aid highways and roads on federal lands that have suffered serious damage as a result of natural disasters or catastrophic failures from an external cause. These funds are awarded to a state after the president or the governor issues a formal emergency declaration and the state files a request for ER for the cost of damages to its eligible highways. Eligible repair work includes emergency repairs needed to restore essential traffic, minimize the extent of damage, or protect the remaining facilities as well as permanent repairs necessary to restore the highway to its pre-disaster condition.

The road issues were caused during flooding in January and February of this year. The flooding and potential for worse flooding in the spring caused Churchill County to close U.S. 95 south between Pasture Road and Schurz for about a month in March as Nevada Department of Transportation crews reinforced the road.

NDOT also installed 12 six-foot-by-four-foot box drainage culverts to the existing 10 roadway culverts to help channel floodwaters underneath U.S. 95 to the Carson Lake sink. NDOT said improvements would also help reinforce the highway against potential flooding in the future.

The work paid off as Churchill County avoided major flooding.

The announcement of the grant came as Reno and other parts of western Nevada set records for the wettest years on record.

In Douglas County, last weekend’s winter storm brought .43 inches to Minden on Sunday, bringing the year’s total to 19.94 inches for the calendar year.

That tops the record of 19.67 inches set in 1909.

At the Reno weather station, where data has been continuously collected since the late 1800s, 15.95 inches in liquid equivalent (rain and snow combined) were recorded. The average is 7.5 inches.