Last winter, Friends volunteers doing some routine culvert-cleaning on the trail discovered a hidden gem near South Lebanon: a sturdy drainage culvert built in our trail’s railroad past.
This gift was “unwrapped” by digging out the buried downhill end. Now it could do its job of transporting water away from the trail surface.
But the gift required some adaptation for modern trail users, as the top of the concrete culvert is 5 feet below the trail surface and only a foot or two away from where we cycle, walk, and run. Below the concrete is a 40-inch steel pipe. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources warned trail users of the drop-off with traffic cones and yellow tape, but a safer, more permanent solution was needed.
Enter the FLMSP Fence Crew. Rich Easterly and Ray Jacobson carefully studied the safety problem. And now, “We are proceeding ever so slowly with our solution,” says Rich.
The pace of the solution is not for lack of effort. Here’s what the volunteers are doing:
Step 1: Erect a more secure safety barrier around the culvert using 50 feet of wire mesh fencing
Step 2: Build a retaining wall below ground level to prevent the ground from sliding down into the culvert and eventually compromising the trail. Two 10-foot upright supports were sunk 3 feet into the ground and crossed with four horizontal boards. Each post hole had to be hand-dug because of the rocky ground, requiring much time and effort. To prevent the wall from collapsing under the weight of the gravel backfill, another 8-foot post was sunk 3 feet into the ground opposite the wall with two supporting boards across the culvert opening for support.
Step 3: Build a fence to prevent trail users from falling into the culvert using two 8-foot posts sunk 3 feet into the ground at a 27-degree angle to the wall and horizontal boards on the trail side of the 6 x 6 posts.
The retaining wall is finished, but the project continues. Rich expects completion sometime this month.
Photos: Top, Rich Easterly and the temporary mesh fence at the beginning of the project; middle, Ray Jacobson starts on the retaining wall; bottom, retaining wall construction
June 2016
