The state Highway Department is close to finishing the first phase of the Highway 84/64 reconstruction project near Dulce.
Department spokeswoman Karyn Lujan said the construction included paving and widening the intersection of Highways 84 and 64 and working on the Amargo Creek Bridge, located at mile marker 142. She said much of the bridge was deteriorating from standard wear and tear.
“They decided to do full reconstruction,” she said.
Lujan said the area between the Highway 84/64 junction and the bridge was also realigned, and the total cost of the project, which began in May, came to $3.5 million.
Project manager Tom Griego said the new two-lane bridge should open next week. The state has proposed further widening and repaving work along Highway 64; it is one of 13 areas to receive part of a $200 million highway-improvement budget approved by Governor Bill Richardson Sept. 2.
Griego said the division of the new funding and schedules for the projects have yet to be worked out. He said the next phase will address the remainder of the stretch of Highway 64 between the County line and its intersection with Highway 84, east of Lumberton. He said that work is expected to damage close to an acre’s worth of high-altitude wetlands along the Highway.
“We’re doing the wetland mitigation for the entire corridor between the junction 84/64 in the vicinity of the Broken Butt Saloon all the way to Dulce,” Griego said.
He said the Department is building a pond, and another contractor will then plant wetland vegetation and shrubs. He said federal regulations require, if a wetland will be destroyed or disturbed by construction, that an area two or three times larger than the disturbed area be created to mitigate the effects of the activity.
“It’s just a huge excavation of about 50,000 yards of material,” Griego said.
Griego said the next phase will probably destroy about an acre of a wetland, and the area the Department creates will fill a few acres when it is finished. He said the future wetland now appears as a large hole by the juncture of Highways 84 and 64.