Pottsville Road Will Stay Closed At Least Until Sometime Next Week

The winding mountainside path many locals refer to as Hillside Rd. in Pottsville will remain closed at least until sometime next week.

The road – which is actually listed as Hotel St. and Cressona Rd. on map apps – was closed to all traffic last week when City officials said sections of the road were actively failing and crumbling down an embankment that overlooks S. Centre St. Guide rails were also failing, too.

City Administrator Ian Mahal worried that if a vehicle hit one of the failing sections of the road, a tragedy could have happened.

Reconstructing Hillside Rd.

With the road closed, Pottsville hired B&H Landscaping, a city company, to shore up two sections of the failing road. The City believes heavy rain caused the road to fail, washing out portions of the east side of the street.

On Tuesday, Coal Region Canary was given exclusive access to the work being conducted on the road. One of the failing sections was nearly complete while a second area was under construction.

The east side of the road overlooks a steep embankment. As water washed down the side of the road, there was no proper curbing or drainage. That caused the roadside to wash away down the embankment. The guide rail was also bending, and in these troubled areas, there was no stable ground beneath it to hold it in place, City officials say.

Billy Zeth, owner of B&H Landscaping, says the road was in such poor condition that when he took a shovel to it upon first arriving at the job site, it began falling apart immediately.

“As soon as we started digging, it started crumbling,” Zeth tells The Canary. “The guard rails basically came out. The road’s so deteriorated, it’s gone. There’s nothing there.”

A long-term fix for this road will likely cost millions of dollars, which Pottsville doesn’t currently have. To get the road reopened as soon as possible, Mahal, Councilman Andy Wollyung and Streets Superintendent Tom Whitaker decided on a temporary fix.

Zeth says his major concerns with fixing the road are water and erosion.

They first removed all unstable portions of the road. About 250 tons of stone and other fill materials – all supplied by the City – were trucked in to essentially reconstruct the foundation of the road.

A concrete base was poured along the roadside, and the failing guide rails were bent back and set into place. A concrete block retaining wall was also constructed atop that base to hold the materials in and prevent the troublesome areas of the road from failing again.

Reopening Hillside

Once Zeth’s firm completes the work on the closed road, the City plans to bring in an engineer to assess what’s been done and hopefully get the OK to reopen it.

Mahal says that should happen next week, if all goes as planned. Both he and Whitaker stress that what’s being done on the road is only meant to be a temporary fix, enough to get the road reopened to traffic.

He says the City will look at grant and loan sources to address the condition of this troublesome road in the future.

“We’re doing it right, right now. Otherwise, it’s going to be closed for a long time,” Mahal says.

Choosing the Contractor

Responding to some questions regarding the selection of B&H Landscaping, Mahal and Whitaker say the company is a trusted city contractor, which is used for other work around Pottsville from time to time.

Zeth says that even though his company is labeled as a landscaping firm, it has completed work of this nature numerous times in the past.

“It was definitely a trusted source,” Whitaker says.

More importantly, they say, Zeth’s company was available right away to perform the work.

Mahal says the work will be completed for an amount under the bidding threshold, which is about $21,000.

“We’re nowhere near the threshold,” Mahal says.

B&H Landscaping is only providing the manpower to complete the job. Pottsville is providing all materials.

“The conversation I had is I’m coming in here, doing the job as fair as possible, to get the job done right and do it as absolutely fairly as I could do,” Zeth says.

Whitaker says his Street Dept. has 14 employees but 4 are off the job currently and the remaining workers were tied up on other jobs, including a collapse under the road on Progress Ave.

“The fact is, we’re down. We’re addressing something that is an emergency situation with a trusted source. And if people have a problem with that, I’d rather have them b**ch and moan then wake up the next day knowing that a family went over a railing,” Mahal says. “If the public wants the city to take the approach to kick the can down the road and take the risk of public safety, that’s not the operation we’re going to be running here.”

^{TOP PHOTO: (from left) Mahal, Zeth, and Streets Superintendent Tom Whitaker examine a nearly completed and reconstructed section of the road. (Coal Region Canary photo)}

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