POINTE COUPEE, La. (WAFB) – The Department of Transportation and Development is having a hard time finding materials due to supply chain issues, now they are having to reuse old materials to build something new.
A simple road repair usually doesn’t take much time in North Pointe Coupee Parish, but it does make the drive time longer.
“You got to go 50 miles down to McCrea and that is hard, it is hard on farmers, it is really hard,” explains Cheryl Lafield.
Lafield is tired of seeing the road closure signs on Highway 417. Since there are not many other crossovers close by in rural North Pointe Coupee, she has to travel extra miles burning more gas.
“I have a ‘93 F10 Ford and I am on a fixed income. So, I really go to watch what I am doing because with groceries and the gas, I am lucky if I made the month,” adds Lafield.
For six weeks cars couldn’t get through this section of the highway because of the washed-out culvert underneath. Without anything supporting the street from underneath, this road is unsafe for drivers.
“This road, while you can’t see it has a cavern that’s completely almost all the way across where the culvert is washed out. So, in essence, if you drive a heavy piece of equipment over it, the road could actually fail and somebody could get hurt,” says State Representative Jeremy LaComb.
The DOTD needs a brand new 80-foot pole to replace the culvert, but due to supply chain issues, construction workers were not going to see it any time soon. So, DOTD decided to think outside of the box, or in this case off the track.
“This process that we are doing right here, we used the same rail cars back in 2016 to repair some washouts,” says Rodney Mallett who is the communications director with DOTD.
Sometimes just looking at what is already there, is all that is needed. Mallett says the supply chain crisis is making them think in different ways to come up with ideas to move forward with their projects.
“This is a smaller example of what we are seeing in the grand scheme of things, but this is an example of how it can impact any community, a rural community, anybody. So yes, we would have been still waiting for that pipe had we not moved the rail cars over here to do this,” adds Mallett.
DOTD is hoping to finish this project in the next two to three weeks if the weather is permitting.
DOTD blames supply chain issues for causing delays for a lot of their projects, they are asking drivers to be patient while they wait it out, or come up with these workarounds.
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