Transportation Officials Host Public Meeting Concerning Route 109

Approximately 52 people attended the public meeting hosted by Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) officials Tuesday evening at LaSalle Springs Middle School to exchange information about future work plans for a certain portion of Missouri Route 109. The meeting was scheduled long before the road collapse of a certain section that occurred in the past two days, so timing correlation of the two was coincidental.

MoDOT community relations manager, Andrew Gates, said most questions voiced from meeting attendees fell into three patterns:

1. How long the highway will be closed.
2. What exactly had happened in the problem section.
3. Concern about why the section was not addressed last summer when the highway already was closed.

"The answer is that the area recently started to get a lot worse than it was last year.  Now we will press forward as quickly as we can," said Gates.

Karen Yeomans, MoDOT area engineer, said crews did do some work to divert water at the problem area of the highway when Route 109 was closed last summer to build a bridge. She said they also rebuilt the drainage ditch there.

Because the emergency work to be done is in the same location as the area targeted for work this summer, there will not be a need to close down Route 109 for a second time this year, said Yeomans.