Heavy rains wiped out Berlin's Fisher Road in September 2020. Photo by Carla Occaso.
The culverts have been ordered. An easement glitch has been smoothed over. So now the town of Berlin is moving full speed ahead on opening Fisher Road back up to traffic if all goes as planned.
Fisher Road is the access road to Central Vermont Medical Center when you are traveling up from Montpelier on Berlin Street. Heavy rain completely washed out the culvert almost a year ago, on September 29, 2020, completely blocking passage on the section of road between the turnoff to Fisher Road and the entrances to the Army National Guard facility and the psychiatric hospital as well as the Berlin Mall and the Central Vermont Medical Center.
But Berlin’s Town Administrator Vincent Conti sounded cautiously optimistic following the August second selectboard meeting. The board unanimously authorized Conti to sign the notice of award of $839,900 to Dubois Construction to complete the work. Berlin citizens had previously voted to allow the selectboard to borrow up to $1.4 million for the repair. And barring any difficulties, Conti told The Bridge the project is on track to be complete by around the second week in November.
“We awarded it Monday night, they will be notified today, and then they will come back with a schedule,” Conti said on August 3, adding that the plan is for the new culvert work to be “completed and open before snow.”
Once this preliminary planning is done, Conti thinks they will be able to start opening up the ground to set in the culverts in roughly four weeks. But first the town had to order manufactured concrete culverts. It takes about 6 to 8 weeks to have the culverts manufactured. They were ordered about two weeks ago.
Pending any surprises or setbacks, Conti said the road will be open before snow flies.
