Brad Deets, development services director for Waukee, presented to the Dallas County Conservation Board Tuesday night the city’s newest plan for crossing the Raccoon River Valley Trail (RRVT) along U.S. Highway 6.
“What we’re proposing is three access points at quarter-mile spacing,” Deets said. “I believe the draft plan that the DOT had proposed showed a total of two full accesses and four right-in/right-out accesses within the same mile stretch. So essentially what we would suggest and request some concurrence on would be reduced from a total of six access points in this mile stretch down to a total of three at quarter-mile spacing.”
The conservation board, which waited for four months for the Waukee proposal, appeared pleased by the plan if still skeptical.
“So my question is this,” Conservation Board member Mark Powell said. “Is the DOT going to come back and say, ‘We want more’?”
Deets offered a confident “No” in response to Powell’s question, assuring the board the plan once in place would be firm.
“I’ve already had that discussion with them,” Deets said. “If the DOT had it their way, they would have none, more than likely, because the DOT — obviously their interest is to get traffic through here in this corridor, so the DOT won’t have a problem in terms of reducing access points.”
While the current plan shows two of the trail crossings as full-access intersections and one as a right-in/right-out, Deets said he planned to recommend making all three full-access, fully “signalized” intersections.
Ultimately, the board unanimously approved a motion to grant one easement across the northern loop of the RRVT at Sunrise Drive and three easements across the southern loop on Highway 6, contingent upon final approval by the Dallas County Board of Supervisors.
In other business, Dallas County Conservation Board Director Mike Wallace reported some disagreement over acceptable use of a grant from the Central Iowa Regional Transportation Planning Alliance (CIRTPA).
CIRTPA said the Dallas County Conservation Board could put the grant funds toward paving, rehabilitation and overlay of the RRVT, Wallace said, but the Iowa DOT argued that because the conservation board agreed, when they accepted a grant for an overlay project in 2004, to maintain the trail for 20 years, they could not use any more federal dollars on trail maintenance during that 20-year period.
Wallace said the conservation board will instead resubmit the application to CIRTPA with the intent to apply the grant money toward rehabilitation of bridges on the trail rather than maintenance of the trail itself.
The Booneville boat ramp project was the board’s final item of business at the July meeting. Wallace said the project has been delayed due to recent flooding.
“With the way the river’s flooding,” Wallace said, “you really couldn’t get a realistic bid from a contractor because you wouldn’t be able to see anything, and when they’re bidding on things and they don’t know what’s there, prices go up.”
He said the Iowa Department of Natural Resources authorized a one-year extension of the grant for the Booneville project.
