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March 29, 2024 5:13 am
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Flooding Brings Minor Delay To Bridge Project

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Construction operations at the Cooper Street bridge in Overton was held up a bit last week when a period of heavy thunderstorms caused regional flood waters to swell the Muddy River flood channel through the lower Moapa Valley, and threatened to wash out the construction site. But work crews for Meadow Valley Construction, the site’s contractor, were prepared and acted quickly to prevent any major damage from being done to the construction site.
“We were watching the forecast and we were ready for it,” said Meadow Valley supervisor Mike Terril who resides in Logandale. “Since we took on the project, we knew of the possibility of flooding at this time of year. So we have factored it into our planning and have taken preventive measures.”
The thunderstorms rolled through the region on Tuesday morning, August 19, at around 1:00 a.m. Within an hour, more than half an inch of rain was reported in Overton, with much more in areas to the west of the community. Moderate local flooding occurred in areas south of Overton and in the Moapa area as washes drained large areas adjacent to the community.
Flood waters draining from the Mormon Mountain range filled the wash which crosses Interstate 15 near mile marker 100. At one point on Tuesday morning the water came up out of the wash and flooded the southbound lanes of I-15 causing traffic to back up. Both southbound lanes of the interstate had to be closed for about 30 minutes, according to Nevada Department of Transportation officials.
But it took much longer for flood waters to reach the Cooper Road construction zone. The vast area drained by the California Wash, in the area surrounding the Paiute Plaza, had received a great deal of rain and all of that water drains into the Muddy River at Glendale.
Meadow Valley Construction officials eyed the river flow throughout the day. According to a U.S. Geological Survey river monitoring station in Overton, the river’s flow gradually increased from about 10 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Tuesday, to more than 400 cfs by the early morning hours of Wednesday.
Terril said that it helped him to have grown up in the Moapa Valley community and to know the way that flood waters behave in the area.
“People who have lived here a while know that we don’t usually get just a sudden wall of water all of a sudden,” Terril said. “Instead the river just slowly rises until it reaches a peak and then goes back down again. So we have some time to get ready for it.”
Terril said that he spent much of the day on Tuesday watching water levels at Wells Siting diversion dam at the north end of Logandale. Once the water crested there, he knew he would have about 4-5 hours before it would do so in Overton.
Terril continued to monitor the rising water all day Tuesday and late into the night. The flood surge didn’t crest at Cooper crossing until about 2:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Terril said.
Before the storms, construction crews had been preparing the ground in the Cooper Crossing site to pour concrete that would form a channel under the bridge, Terril said. The possibility of losing those preparations was the primary concern of the contractor.
“We hadn’t poured the concrete yet, but we were worried that we might lose the money in materials and labor that we had put into the prep work,” Terril said.
Fortunately, the company had a plan in place to prevent that from happening. A heavy liner fabric was placed over the prep work areas to protect them. The idea was that the flood waters would flow over the fabric, and might even cover it with silt, but that most of the prep work would remain unaffected beneath it. The plan seemed to have worked, Terril said.
“We just had to dig out the silt on top and remove the liner and our prep work was mainly still useable underneath it,” Terril said. “Our biggest setback now is that we just have to take the time to let everything dry out. But it could have been a lot worse.”
The contractor also had to close Cooper Street at the crossing in order to remove a portion of the detour road that has allowed traffic to pass through the area during construction. Removing the road allowed the flood waters to flow more quickly through the area, Terril said.
“If we hadn’t done that, the flood water would have backed up and caused a reservoir above the detour,” Terril said. “It might have caused settling problems to the footings of the bridge that are already in place, and it might have even flooded into the residences in the area. In the end, the flood probably would have washed out the detour road anyway.”
Terril said that the company plans to repair the detour and reopen the road as soon as it is dry enough to work on it.
“We apologize to the neighbors and people in the community for having to close the road down,” Terril said on Friday afternoon. “We hope to have it back up in the first few days of next week.”

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