Hwy. 410 Detour Complete

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By Sade Malloy

Summary

The detour around the Highway 410 landslide is now complete. It's been nearly two months since the landslide demolished nearly half-a-mile of the highway and diverted the river. Action News gives you a look at the finished product.

Story Published: Dec 5, 2009 at 6:53 PM PST

NILE VALLEY -- The detour around the Highway 410 landslide is now complete. It's been nearly two months since the landslide demolished nearly half-a-mile of the highway and diverted the river. Action News gives you a look at the finished product.

Once a dirt county road, the now paved Highway 410 detour provides a smooth ride for drivers.

Five thousand cars use this road during the summer months, so besides getting an access road up and running quickly, one of the big challenges with the project was the Naches River.

"Had we not done the diversion the possibility of catastrophic failure was there because of uncontrolled erosion," says Don Whitehouse, Washington State Department Of Trasnportation.

WSDOT says in November the river can raise 10 times it's volume. They made a diversion structure and re-routed the river to a new safer channel. In all the detour cost $13 million.

The folks at Whistlin' Jack Lodge are happy the detour is complete. The owner tells Action News he lost a substantial amount of business because of it.

"It's changed the way we do business. During this time we've had to lay some people off," says Shane Williams, Whistlin' Jack Lodge.

Williams says they laid-off one-third of their 35 person staff, some of them have returned, but not all. Lack of traffic and confusion about the detour kept their customers away.

"I didn't know about the detour, a friend that came up with us showed us," says Corey Bugni, Whistlin' Jack Lodge customer.

There's nothing to keep the customers from using the road now. The October landslide changed Highway 410 forever but this detour has kept it open.