State Hopes To Bid Hwy 99 Job In December (published 12/1/2007)

State highway officials are still hoping to take bids in December for reconstruction of Highway 99 between Concord and Eagleville, pending receipt of final environmental permits.

Eagleville Mayor Nolan Barham announced at the last council meeting that state legislators had informed him that someone had filed some sort of document with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Department (TDEC) that could possibly delay the bid date.

Apparently the document was a request for a public hearing filed during a public comment period regarding a permit application filed by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) for the Highway 99 project.

Tisha Calabrese, a TDEC spokesman, said the request for a public hearing has since been withdrawn.

TDEC still has to review and respond to any comments that were made during the public comment period that ended in October and take them into consideration regarding the final permit decision, Calabrese said.

"We are, however, aware of TDOT’s bid date and are working to meet the timeline," she said. "We anticipate a permit decision being made in short order."

B.J. Doughty, a spokesman for TDOT, said that agency has submitted its responses to the comments received by TDEC during the public comment period.

"We hope to receive the final permits from TDEC within the next few weeks and also hope to let the project to construction in December as planned," she said. "If everything else falls in line, it would probably be February or March before construction would actually being."

The permit TDOT is seeking concerns possible impacts of the construction of the highway to water quality in the area.

The Highway 99 roadwork will disturb about 4.23 acres of wetlands which TDOT is having to replace at a 2 to 1 ratio in the Harpeth Wetland Mitigation Bank. The road reconstruction is also expected to have some impacts on Kelley Creek, Puckett Branch and seven unnamed streams.

The springhead of the Harpeth River is located about 125 feet north on the opposite side of one of the wetlands but the construction plans show no disturbance to the spring or the trees surrounding it.

The improvements to the 4.6 mile segment of Highway 99 call for widening the existing roadway to two 12-foot lanes with eight-foot shoulders. Six feet of the shoulders will be paved.

Turning lanes will be built at Swamp Road, Claxton Road, Mount Vernon Road, North Lane, Mount Pleasant Road and Ditch Lane.

The updated roadway will follow the existing Highway 99 route from the Concord area to about Swamp Road with some curves being straightened out along the way.

The road will turn south near Swamp Road on a totally new roadbed and will run across the fields and will pass Eagleville School on the south side. The new section will tie into U.S. 41-A just south of Holt Specialty Equipment Co.

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