By Donna Westfall – December 20, 2016 – You may not like it but here it is.  Cooper Avenue is due to be closed for another three plus months and cost roughly $100,000 to fix.

Roger Gitlin, Supevisor 1st District, posted the following on Facebook:

“Allow me to update you on the closure of Graveyard Hill aka Cooper Ave at J St. this is a City public works project that has become a bit more problematic than was anticipated. At tonight’s (December 19, 2016) Crescent City Council meeting, Public Works Director, Eric Wier, delivered the not so good news that the road will be closed for another three months. Conservative estimates say Cooper Ave will be open end of March-mid April 2017.

I’ll try to be as less technical as I can, akin to peeling back the onion, but the more the road was examined, the more serious the problems became; a 42″ inch pipe which runs underneath Cooper will need to be replaced. The crux of the problem is the pipe is misaligned with the culvert. No small job to correct considering Del Norte County is in the midst of one of its wettest rainy seasons in many years.

The Council authorized a request for funding from the Local Transportation Commission. Problematic? YES! Cooper is a major thoroughfare/traffic collector.  Better you you should know the not so good news so you can make appropriate detour arrangements through the Winter and part of Spring.”

Thank goodness our City is responding in a timely manner.  We could have had a situation like Brookings, Oregon on Hwy 101 where their sinkhole had traffic detoured for months and months.