COVINGTON, Ky. - It's difficult to say exactly when the eastern edge of Western Avenue started dropping. It's much easier to say when it's going to be fixed: Soon.

 

An engineering firm hired by the City - Terracon Consultants Inc. - will spend about 80 business days assessing the road and figuring out the best way to stabilize it. Based on that report, the City will then hire a contractor to carry out the project.

 

"The eastern edge of the street has dropped about 4 feet," Covington Public Works Director Rick Davis said. "It's really bad. Pictures don't do it justice."

 

Terracon, with locations around the United States, including Cincinnati, was hired by the Covington City Commission recently on a contract worth up to $33,900.

 

Western Avenue runs north-south on the west side of Interstates 71/75. The project area lies at the northernmost tip of the Lewisburg neighborhood, beginning at Ninth Street and running 500 feet north.

 

The project is complicated by the presence of high-voltage electric lines - not the ordinary neighborhood lines but large transmission lines - that run directly above the east edge of the street, Davis said. They would interfere with large pile-driving equipment that would normally be brought in to pound steel H-beams into the slope to stabilize it, he said.

 

"We're looking forward to seeing the solution that Terracon comes up with," Davis said.

 

 

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