KDOT holds open house for K-7

COLUMBUS — James Burgan has lived along Kansas Highway 7 for a majority of his life. He once owned the land where the large landfill sits near Skidmore. The planned expansion of K-7 to get new shoulders reminds him of the history of this 11-mile stretch of land.

“My granddad told me that he remembered when it went from a dirt cowpath to a gravel road. Then he saw it go from a gravel road to a blacktop. He told me, ‘Young man, you’ll never see it go any farther.’ But he was wrong,” Burgan said.

Thursday, Burgan was at an open house in Columbus to see the details of a planned expansion by the Kansas Department of Transportation of K-7 from Columbus to Cherokee. While the road will remain a two-lane highway, it will get shoulders, wider lanes, additional drainage structures and mine remediation.

The road is projected to have 3,900 vehicles per day by 2014, and up to 5,000 vehicles per day by 2034, according to KDOT projections.

“There are quite a few highways with more shoulders and less traffic,” said Matt Hinshaw, project design leader. “That’s the last stretch of K-7 between Girard and the state line to be upgraded. Some of the complexities of this stretch have forced us to take a longer and longer look at construction. It’s ready, and it needs an upgrade.”

Some of those complexities have driven the expected cost of the project up, from an originally planned $33 million to $42 million just in construction costs.

“Definitely the underground mines are the big challenge. There are landfills on each side of the roadway, too, which we have to stay away from for the alignment,” Hinshaw said. “You can’t disrupt that, and you can’t buy right of way from them. There are also drainage issues. This area has a history of flooding. We can’t say for certain, but with the design, we hope to stop the frequency of flooding.”

There are those like Burgan that know all about the area’s history with mining and the “complexities” they have caused for K-7. Burgan said his grandfather told him about the first steam shovel that ever entered Cherokee County, which came from the Panama Canal and was placed not far from the route, just to the northeast of the modern intersection of K-7 and Star Valley Road.

Burgan knows exactly where all the mines used to be around Skidmore, Turck, and Stippville, and which of those mines had mules to help remove the coal from below. He said that the underground miners left pillars of coal to help hold up the mines, but at some point many of those

“Back during the war, during the depression, people were so hard up for coal, they went in and took those pillars out. They just wanted to stay warm,” Burgan said. “They’d take their kids’ wagons and wheelbarrows in and a pick or shoot it with black powder until the pillars were all gone.”

in the 1990s, KDOT discovered their road was undermined — quite badly, in some places. KDOT area engineer George Dockery showed pictures to those at the open house from that time of caves underneath the road, at some points just 10 feet below the road surface, along with a few remaining coal pillars and the remnants of the wood posts that once held up the ceiling in the coal bed.

KDOT went in and did some work on those sites where the road was most undermined, putting in concrete bridges in some points to allow the underground river to continue to flow, as directed by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

The underground river is still there, as a few at the open house noted that they could still hear the river when there are heavy rains. Those mines remain a concern for KDOT, which explains some of the slow going with this project.

However, the project has reached the field check stage, so right of way acquisition is soon to begin. In fact, the appraisal process is scheduled to begin in Spring 2013, and officials expect it could take up to three years to get all of the right of way purchased. Folks like Burgan don’t mind too much, because they see an expanded road as much safer than the current road.

The current road is just 26 feet wide, with 2-foot shoulders on each side, leaving each lane 11 feet wide. The expanded road would be 44 feetwide, with 12-foot lanes and 10-foot shoulders.

“I’m not bothered by [the right-of-way acquisition],” said Burgan, who still owns property on the west side of K-7 that would need to be purchased for the road expansion. “The highway is more beneficial than what little bit of land is giving to me. It’s very unsafe now. If it’ll save one life, what little bit I’m going to lose is OK by me.”

Perhaps no one was more involved with getting the project approved for the 10-year T-WORKS transportation plan than Rep. Doug Gatewood. Gatewood is retiring from his post, and is in the last few months of his term. He said it was nice seeing his pet project realized before the end of his term.

“Everybody understands that we’ve got to get this done. We’re moving forward,” Gatewood said. “It’s exciting to see it happen. It’s needed. I only wish they could start tomorrow.”

The project is expected to be let in spring 2016, with construction beginning soon thereafter. Hinshaw said that because of the mining, the project will likely be split into two portions, and may take as long as two to three years for construction to be complete.

Andrew Nash can be reached at andrew.nash@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 ext. 140.