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COLUMBUS — The Colorado County Commissioners met in regular session Feb. 13.
County Judge Ty Prause gave a report on the Texas Department of Transportation’s Interstate 10 expansion project.
Prause referenced how former TxDOT employee, Jerome Dvorak, approached him about what he was seeing concerning the project.
“I looked at what he brought in in the way of maps and his studies and his works and his measurements he had taken,” Prause said. “And he said where I-10 is proposed to tie into 90, we’re going to have Highway 90 some 6 feet below the highest point of the water where Harvey was after the floods and 2017.”
Prause said the conversation immediately made him think about some potential problems that could occur since the part of the county that the expansion will affect is used during times of disaster.
He said when he reached out to TxDOT, the area engineer, district engineer, and planners for expansion came out and listened to them and Dvorak.
He thanked TxDOT for coming to visit the area about three weeks ago. Prause said TxDOT revisited their engineering and agreed that U.S. Route 90 should not be lowered where it ties into Interstate 10.
“It has never flooded since it was engineered to be that way,” Prause said. “So, Highway 90 will be as high as it is right now, which is about 200 feet above sea level where it ties in to the new I-10 expansion.”
Prause said the map and plan is avai lable at TxDOT and hopes to have it available for the public the week of Feb. 13 on the county website. Residents can also call the judge’s office to inquire about accessing the map.
Prause said another way TxDOT has worked with Colorado County on this expansion project from the time it started about two or three years ago, is regarding the feeder roads. He said EMS Director Michael Furrh as well as Chuck Rogers and Chad Girndt from emergency management were present in the three or four meetings they had with TxDOT.
“We brought to their attention that it wasn’t a good idea to have long expanses of one-way feeder roads on I-10 where ambulances would have added time to respond in an emergency, because every second counts as we’ve been taught, nor our firemen if it’s a volunteer fire call,” Prause said. “So, they did make the concession that every place there is going to be an interchange in this county, there’s only going to be a two-mile distance that you have to run one way, and I don’t know of any other county that is getting that out of this expansion.”
Prause said the bids for the project will let in July in Austin and that TxDOT will begin the expansion coming all the way to 102 Exit east of Columbus in just a few months. Prause said if there are enough funds, the project will go through Colorado County in the first round of lettings, meaning it could take until 2025 to early 2026 to complete.
“It will be dirty for a while; it will be a pain for a while,” he said. “But if you get to Sealy and Brookshire where they have finished, it works very well to have more lanes. Also, having the one-way feeders is going to be a learning curve, but it will be safer because everybody that comes out here from the city believes and assumes that those feeders east of here are one-way feeders and they’re still two-way.”
Prause said there have been wrecks because of this, so the county and TxDOT will release more information as times draws near. They will also have the radio inform the public for at least a month that the feeders are going to become one-way and will have interchanges every two months.
