By Ken Irving, Senior Reporter
Construction on Highway 281 on the east side of campus has disrupted water lines, while also bringing delays and challenges for students, businesses and the community.
The project currently underway on Highway 281 will be an extensive project.
The $9.07 million project will take about a year and a half to grade, drain and resurface 1.44 miles of College Boulevard, the city’s name for that section of Highway 281. Oklahoma Department of Transportation is widening the highway while also adding a sidewalk.
Along the way, they will be placing new storm drainage, relocating water and sewer lines and adding new concrete and pavement.
Many residents in Alva have experienced water outages or low water pressure for the last month because of water line relocations that had to take place before the road project could continue.
“The waterlines in the city valve there [along Highway 281] were just getting pretty old,” said Kelly Parker, the mayor of Alva. “The existing lines for the city of Alva were over 60 years old. … We had to replace a significant portion. Probably about 60 feet of that went under the highway.”
The issue with the water lines, despite being 60 years old, is that they would be directly under the highway and running the length of the highway when the widening occurred. If the lines were not relocated then any servicing of the lines would require tearing up the new roadway. To prevent that, the lines were moved up to 50 feet east of where they were originally located, Parker said.
The news of the highway being built came as a surprise to some, but it was in the works for years.
Northwestern’s Director of Marketing and University Relations Kelsey Martin said that she and a few other staff members at the school were alerted about the project a few years ago.
BCM Director Miles Harris was one of the people who were not alerted about the project happening.
“ODOT to my knowledge has not sent us a letter or a phone call about them doing either side [of the roadway],” Harris said. “In the middle of the summer, they started tearing up what I’m guessing is the sewer in the back, and I had no idea about it. Even on the lawn by the ditch, I didn’t know what was going on either. I get [that] the state may own the sidewalks and electrical lines, so you can’t gripe about it. However, I would have liked a heads up about it.”
As the director of a business that is about to be affected by government construction, Harris said he should have been notified so he could better plan for the impact on the BCM’s free Wednesday lunch.
“We had been in the 200s [coming for lunch] … but [now] we had hit about 170 so yea, it was quite a bit less than normal,” Harris said.
He noted that it is dangerous for the students to cross the road as well.
Students are not the only ones being affected. Harris said he does feel bad for the various churches that bring the food on Wednesdays because they have to drive through the construction zone and then end up wasting a lot of food because the numbers attending are lower.
The construction on Highway 281 is also a major hazard for students of Northwestern who cross the road every day, either to park or attend events at the BCM. Campus Police Chief Dennis Kilmer said he alerted Caleb Mosburg, vice president of student affairs, about the situation and had him send a mass email to students to be cautious while crossing the highway.
Kilmer said he has watched a lot of near accidents because the signage about the construction work and the Ranger statue block a clear view to make the turn from Oklahoma Boulevard onto College.
Dr. David Pecha, executive vice president, said the compact parking lot in front of Vinson Hall will be affected whenever construction begins on the west side of the road. This will force people who regularly park there to find parking elsewhere on campus.
In an email on Sept. 24, Mosburg encouraged people to park in the lots south of Shockley Hall and across Eighth Street to the west of Shockley Hall or in the north overflow parking lots across Oklahoma Boulevard from Herod Hall. Everyone should avoid parking around the BCM and College Hill Church of Christ.