Posted on 06/06/2019 12:52:58 PM PDT by Red Badger
A 8.5-million- pound boulder that demolished a Colorado mountain highway May 24 will stay in place and the road will be rebuilt around it, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said. Photo courtesy of Colorado Department of Transportation
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DENVER, June 5 (UPI) -- Colorado has a new Instagram-worthy landmark. An 8.5-million-pound boulder that rolled off a cliff and demolished a section of mountain highway has been renamed "Memorial Rock," Gov. Jared Polis said.
It would have cost the Colorado Department of Transportation $200,000 to blow up the boulder with dynamite and haul it away, but instead the department will rebuild Highway 145 to wind around the giant rock described as "the size of a house" between Cortez and Telluride in southwestern Colorado, Polis said.
"We expect that for generations to come, people will have the opportunity to observe this geological masterpiece that we're calling Memorial Rock," Polis said at a news conference earlier this week.
As part of a rock slide, two giant boulders tumbled about 2,000 feet from a mountain ledge onto the highway at the start of Memorial Day weekend. Transportation officials destroyed the smaller 2.3-million-pound rock with explosives.
The enormous boulder rock blocked traffic and closed down the highway. A local restaurant had to cancel their long-awaited Memorial Day motorcycle ride.
"There's a huge avalanche-size scar down the side of the mountain," said Brandy Randall, co-owner of the Enterprise Bar and Grill up the canyon from the rock in Rico, Colorado.
"Our maintenance guy was stuck in [the neighboring town of] Dolores for five days," said Rico's Town Manager Kari Distefano.
The highway will be widened with additional shoulder and a new guardrail will be installed near the rock, Lisa Schwantes, the transportation department's southwest Colorado spokeswoman, told UPI.
Fixing the two-lane highway will cost about $1.3 million, Polis said, but most of that money will come from emergency funds from the Federal Highway Administration.
"We lost a ton of business, but we hope people come back up later this summer," Randall said. "We were told the highway would be fixed by the Fourth of July."
"Everybody meet Memorial Rock.
"We will not be destroying this 8.5 million pound boulder - which is the size of a house. Instead, we're going to make a new state landmark and save taxpayers money.https://t.co/BlkgnKwBEM- Jared Polis (@GovofCO) June 4, 2019
...or ads from local establishments.
The roadway has to be rebuilt anyway... so the 1.3 million is not totally because of the rock....
I prefer "Hickenlooper's Brain".
“Let’s save $200k by spending $1.2 million.”
Key to the “analysis” put forth by CO DOT is the phrase “paid from the Federal Highway Emergency Fund”. And not, that simply using their own funds 200K of them to blow and haul it away would be a viable money saving for EVERYBODY IN THE COUNTRY cost item.
See how that works? Spending “other peoples money” to save the State of Colorado’s money. Dat’s how it woiks! And it is completely utterly wrong, ethically. Highway cost shifting from the State to a federal fund that is already tapped out seriously. See— Puerto Rico and the FL panhandle re: Hurricanes.
They should have used ounces instead of pounds.
That would have been a REALLY big boulder.
I can’t believe that the cost of re-aligning the highway will be less than the cost of demolishing this rock.
Or that it won’t take a lot longer to get done. Unless they’re going to circumvent the environmental reviews, etc.
Wow!
So it costs 200k to remove the rock and 1,200k to go around it. What’s not to like, as long as your not the one footing the bill.
Besides the more Money shuffled through contactors, the Greater the kickback.
Libs love wasting money.
If that rock takes requests, I’d like it drop on a few places... here, I have list.
8.5 million pounds????? Who weighed it?
Years ago, a big one missed us by about a minute between Silverton and Ouray. Glad I stopped for a minute to read of avalanche deaths at an earlier spot.
Just get the 200,000 illegal aliens who came across the border this week and have them push it over the edge.....
“The roadway has to be rebuilt anyway... so the 1.3 million is not totally because of the rock.”
Critical thinking skills are important .
Simple, it’s federal money. Colorado saves $200,000. The other 49 states pay $1.3 million.
““It would have cost the Colorado Department of Transportation $200,000 to blow up the boulder with dynamite and haul it away...
...Fixing the two-lane highway will cost about $1.3 million, Polis said, but most of that money will come from emergency funds from the Federal Highway Administration.”
Not sure how that is a good decision. $200K versus $1.3 million.”
“Simple, it’s federal money.”
Yes. And it is STILL 6 times as much. Nothing like wasting someone else’s money, which is the entire problem with the liberal approach to government - people ‘doing good things’ with someone else’s money!
Well, it is $200k to remove the rock, but no one has said how much it would cost to fix the road once the rock was removed.
As one of the orcs in Lord of the Rings put it: “Where there’s a whip, there’s a will, me slugs!”
Unless you are suggesting the ancients had their alien friends use their anti-gravity technology to float the rocks where they wanted them. :)
You almost were added to the list!..............
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