MENDON – Cache County officials say they’re struggling to fix a highly traveled road after storm damaged ripped it apart months ago.
Residents near Mendon Road say it has been failing since February. People like cabinet maker Paul Myers say this has made business travel extremely inconvenient. Myers says, “I’ve cut down on trips to Logan because of it. I try to lump up because it costs more to get to Logan because it’s a further drive.”
A couple of different things are adding to the delays. First, Cache County Director of Development Service Josh Runhaar says water levels haven’t gone down far enough to make the permanent repairs. Plus, he says they can’t get FEMA assistance, and there isn’t enough damage to merit federal highway funds. “We [need] about a quarter million dollars for what was damaged. We’d need about a half million dollars if we need to put something back in. It doesn’t qualify under federal highways,” Runhaar says.
Also, some of the temporary repairs cost almost as much as the permanent ones, according to Runhaar. He says, “We just don’t have the funding to go spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on a temporary solution, then have to rip it all out to put in a permanent solution.”
Runhaar hopes to know a timeframe for the repairs within a couple of weeks.