West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) District 1 maintenance crews will clear rock and debris from a slip above Keystone Drive in Charleston as the next step in slip repairs in the area.
Keystone Drive lies at the bottom of a hollow in the shadow of West Virginia International Yeager Airport. Just up the mountain from Keystone Drive, Airport Road winds its way to the airport.
Slips along Airport Road and Keystone Drive have become a problem in the past couple of years. Access to both roads is on airport property, so the WVDOH is working closely with airport officials in planning and executing repairs.
District 1 work crews have already made repairs on the hillside above Keystone Drive and below Airport Road. In a 13-day construction blitz in March, WVDOH drilling and construction crews built a 500-foot piling wall along Airport Road, sinking a total of 89 steel pilings to repair a slip above Keystone Drive. The WVDOH worked with Gov. Jim Justice and airport officials to secure a grant to pay for the work.
District 1 crews also sank soil nails horizontally into the hillside above Keystone Drive to secure the hillside. Soil nails are like long steel bolts that can be driven into earth and rock.
“Now that we have that stabilized, we can start to work on Keystone,” said Kathy Rushworth, P.E., WVDOH District 1 Maintenance Engineer. Crews now performing flood clean-up will be the same crews working on the Keystone Drive project.
The next step is to remove rocks and debris in the slip above Keystone Drive and below Airport Road. Rushworth said that work will be best done this winter, when there is less vegetation to interfere with work crews.
In the meantime, Keystone Drive remains restricted to one lane in the area of the slip. The WVDOH will keep the public informed as work progresses.