FORKS — The Forks City Council will meet today to consider calling for Olympic National Park to blunt the potential economic impact of proposed intermittent closures of U.S. Highway 101 around Lake Crescent that would begin in 2017.
The park “needs to address the means of mitigating the adverse economic and social impacts associated” with closures of the primary thoroughfare between the West End and the rest of the North Olympic Peninsula, according to a proposed resolution.
The council will consider approving the document at its meeting at 7:30 p.m. at 500 E. Division St.
The park should assess how it or other federal agencies “can provide various forms of financial assistance and compensation,” the draft resolution says.
The proposal was made by Mayor Byron Monohon and city staff after the park conducted a public hearing in Forks last Wednesday on ideas for handling traffic during Highway 101 repairs.
“Basically, we thought that any effort to close 101 for a period of time other than a few days would be detrimental to the West End,” said Rod Fleck, city planning director and attorney.
“The park service needs to figure how to make this project have minimal impact on the West End economy,” he added, referring to “everything from tourism to education to the logging industry.”
Monohon was unavailable for comment this weekend.
The park, along with the Federal Highway Administration as a cooperating agency, plans to fix the potholes, rock fall hazards, failing retaining walls and rotten guardrails on 12.3 miles of the highway around Lake Crescent.
The park is accepting public comment until June 7 on six preliminary alternatives for scheduling traffic delays and closures during construction on the stretch of highway, which is within the park.
A draft environmental assessment is expected to be released this summer or fall.
Planned repairs are necessary, according to the park.
“Without rehabilitation, catastrophic failure of portions of the roadway could occur, causing an increased frequency of unplanned delays and closures to repair the road,” says the park’s document on the preliminary alternatives.
The question the park seeks to answer is how to deal with traffic during construction.
Aside from a required alternative of doing nothing, the preliminary proposals range from three years of 30-minute delays during the construction season, which is from March to November, to closing the stretch of highway entirely for 1.7 construction seasons while traffic is diverted onto state highways 112 and 113.
A detour onto Highway 112 would add another half-hour of travel, Fleck said.
The trip on Highway 101 now takes a little more than an hour between Forks and Port Angeles — a distance of 56 miles.
Highway 112 is not always dependable, Fleck added.
“The odds of us having that road available during those three to four years [of construction] are not high because of the high number of washouts on 112,” he said.
The preliminary alternatives the park has published can be added to or amended — and the park isn’t yet sure it will go ahead with the repairs, said park Superintendent Sarah Creachbaum.
“We believe there is a necessity. . . It would be premature now to say one way or another,” she said.
“It’s so early in process, we don’t even have a real proposal yet.”
“We’re asking people for public comment. I’m excited that [the Forks City Council is] commenting.
“New ideas are very welcome,” Creachbaum said.
Public comment also will be accepted this fall on the draft environmental assessment.
The present schedule is to release the final environmental assessment and the final design the winter of 2016 and begin construction the winter of 2017.
For more information, see http://tinyurl.com/PDN-highwayatlakecrescent.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
