Traveling along a section of Alberts Hill Road, which is lined with new flex-beam guardrailing, a town street sweeper picks up dirt from the roadway. On Friday, May 2, the town reopened to through-traffic the section of Alberts Hill Road near Lake Lillinonah at Upper Paugussett State Forest. The road section had been closed to through-traffic since late last year after the town discovered that a large culvert beneath the road there was collapsing.
The town has reopened to through-traffic Alberts Hill Road, a roadway in the town's northeast corner that links Walnut Tree Hill Road to Echo Valley Road. The road's reopening eases traffic flow through that section of town, improving access by the general public, as well as police, fire, ambulance, public works crews, and school buses.
Late last year, the town closed to traffic a section of Alberts Hill Road just west of its intersection with Valley Field Road North, after it was discovered that a corroded, aging large-diameter metallic culvert beneath Alberts Hill Road was collapsing. The culvert carries a tributary stream's flow beneath the road and into a cove at the Lake Lillinonah section of the Housatonic River.
The closure of Alberts Hill Road to through-traffic had meant lengthy detours for motorists seeking to travel from one end of that street to the other. That detour included the use of Walnut Tree Hill Road, Old Green Road, Horseshoe Ridge Road, Old Farm Hill Road, and Echo Valley Road.
The reopening of Alberts Hill Road reconnects a link in a shortcut that motorists use to travel between Southbury and Brookfield.
Town Public Works Director Fred Hurley said that a replacement culvert was installed beneath Alberts Hill Road in March. The new reinforced-concrete culvert is 80 feet long and 84 inches in diameter.
The closed road section was not reopened to traffic until extensive metal flex-beam guardrailing was installed alongside the street. The town reopened the road on May 2.
On that day, as a town street sweeper cleaned sand from the newly paved road section, a group of people fished in the lake's cove while standing on an embankment alongside the street.
"I think everybody's happy that that's open," Mr Hurley said of the long-awaited road reopening. "It's clearly much easier to get around town."
He added, however, that some area residents who had become accustomed to living on what were two long dead-end-street sections of Alberts Hill Road will now experience through-traffic in the area again.
The town paid approximately $125,000 to Warren Kimball & Sons, a private contractor, to perform the Alberts Hill Road improvement project, Mr Hurley said.
The town had closed Alberts Hill Road to through-traffic due to concerns that heavy loads traveling over the road pavement where the subterranean culvert was collapsing might cause the road itself to collapse. Such heavy loads include vehicles such as concrete mixers, heating fuel trucks, and school buses.
The culvert's deterioration was first noticed last fall during an annual autumnal water drawdown of Lake Lillinonah, which is a reservoir used for hydroelectric generation at the nearby Shepaug Dam.
The collapse of some asphalt pavement on Alberts Hill Road near Lake Lillinonah led town workers to discover the collapsing culvert beneath the road. The deteriorated culvert was more than 50 years old.