NEWS

Colorado company saves Homer Road from fall into river

Kent Mallett
Reporter
  • The Licking County road, west of Utica in Burlington Township, remains closed for emergency repairs.
  • GeoStabilization International plans to finish Wednesday, then the county will put in guardrails.

HOMER – It will take a Colorado company specializing in emergency landslide repair to save Homer Road from falling into the North Fork of the Licking River.

The northern Licking County road, west of Utica in Burlington Township, closed last week just west of Ohio 661 for emergency repairs, as the road continued to collapse and fall down the adjacent 40-foot embankment.

The road is expected to reopen July 10, weather permitting, almost three weeks after it was closed.

GeoStabilization International, using technology developed when the Colorado Department of Transportation built Interstate 70 from Denver to the Utah line, plans to finish its work on Wednesday.

The county will then take another week to put in guardrails before Homer Road can reopen to the public.

“The slope is very unstable,” Licking County Engineer Bill Lozier said. “The slope is falling down around the guys as they work. If any more rain, we would lose the whole (road).”

Greg Bachman, project manager with GeoStabilization International, said the work involves launching 20-foot-long soil nails, 1.5 feet in diameter, into the embankment.

Posts are installed, and then the hillside is knitted together with mesh and Shotcrete, a dry concrete sprayed onto the mesh. The county will install guardrails into the 36-inch thick concrete.

Luckily, we’re getting to this one before it could have been much worse,” Bachman said. “For Ohio, this is a pretty major slide.”

The guardrail was hanging in the air and the entire shoulder of the road was gone, Lozier said.

Homer Fire Department Capt. Marvin Haught said it’s great to see repairs made to the road just west of the station.

“We’ve watched it, for years, disappear,” Haught said. “It was all the way over to the white line. Eventually, the whole road would have slid in.”

Fortunately, the department did not have any emergency runs in that direction last week. Most of the department’s runs are on Ohio 661, U.S. 62 or Ohio 657.

Homer Road gets a lot of use, Haught said, but people adjust their routes, using Ohio 661, U.S. 62, and Lafayette Road.

“It is a major road,” Haught said. “Everybody around here knows how to get around it.”

kmallett@newarkadvocate.com

740-328-8545

Twitter: @kmallett1958