UPDATE: The latest on the Basin Avenue project
The Basin Avenue improvement project has been inconveniencing drivers for seven months now and Nye County Public Works Director Tom Bolling assured the community in July that everything would wrap up prior to the Fall Festival. Although this was the original expectation, the completion date has once again shifted and the project will only be partially finished before the largest public event of the year in Pahrump.
The paving of the bulk of the 1.2-mile stretch of Basin Avenue will not take place until after Fall Festival is said and done. However, the section that directly fronts Petrack Park, where the Fall Festival is held, will see its brand new surface laid in time for the big event. This includes paving of the intersection of Basin Avenue at Dahlia Street, as well, meaning that heavily used intersection will soon be operational once more.
“We (Nye County road crews) are finishing up (excavation and prep work on) the Dahlia intersection through the Whitney intersection. We’re scheduled to start paving Monday (Sept. 11), although we’ll probably push that to Wednesday (Sept. 13),” Bolling reported at the Nye County Commission meeting earlier this week. “But it will be paved next week. And we’re hoping to get it striped two days before the festival, so right under the wire.”
The festival runs Sept. 21-24 at Petrack Park in Pahrump.
Bolling stressed that the paving he was referencing is only from Dahlia Street through the intersection of Basin and Whitney Lane, with the rest of the mainline, from Whitney Lane west to Blagg Road, to remain as gravel. He said it’s his department’s plan to have the last of the paving and striping done immediately following the Fall Festival.
The road project kicked off in February and was originally scheduled to finish in mid-May. The process of bidding and awarding the contracts for the paving caused delays.
Nye County Public Works in charge of handling all of the excavation and backfill, along with any other necessary preparatory work. Contractors are being used for the paving and concrete associated with the project. Most of the contract work has been awarded to Las Vegas Paving Corp., which undertook the paving at the Basin Avenue and Blagg Road intersection and will also do the Dahlia intersection and Basin mainline paving. Pahrump-based Performance Concrete LLC was selected for the concrete work.
Motorists are asked to use caution and exercise patience whenever traveling through construction and are reminded that traffic fines are doubled in all work zones.
Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com
Flood cleanup delayed as FEMA evaluates damage
Flood cleanup from the last round of rain events is already underway in the northern and central parts of Nye County but as Nye County Public Works Director Tom Bolling reported earlier this week, cleanup in the town of Pahrump is on hold until officials get the go-ahead from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"Cleanup from the flooding will begin as FEMA approves us to do so," Bolling told the Nye County Commission and public on Wednesday, Sept. 6. "We started cleaning up almost immediately… and we started to think we should begin fixing this stuff but then we had a meeting and FEMA said absolutely not. They want to be able to see every bit of damage they can. That's why we have not cleaned up a single thing. We've only made the roads passable and once the dust started happening, we went out and started remediating the dust."
Bolling was referring to the flooding caused by Hurricane Hilary and the thunderstorms that trained through the state a week later. As he noted, the hurricane itself caused more damage in the north and central portions of the county but the thunderstorms that followed took a bigger toll on areas such as Beatty, Amargosa and Pahrump.
Bolling said FEMA officials were in town this week to assess the damage, with their investigation concluding Wednesday morning. However, FEMA may return if the value of the total damages does not meet a specified threshold for federal assistance, which for Nye County for this particular event is $230,000.
"So we are waiting for their determination on when we can get started on doing the cleanup efforts," Bolling explained.
