County Commission advances plans for future roundabout and Lake Alvin bridge repairs

The Lincoln County Commission met Tuesday, October 22 in the Lincoln County Boardroom. Commissioners heard agenda items including  talks of future roundabouts and bridge repairs.

Highway Superintendent, Terry Fluit joined the meeting to request board action to approve the Highway Superintendent to sign the proposal for a consultant to begin design engineering for a roundabout at the intersection of CR116 and CR105, to be constructed in 2026, for a fee of $97,444. 

“The intersection project is scheduled for 2026, and the plan is we can start designing this thing this year and hopefully by November or December of next year we’ll be able to go to bid with it for construction in ’26,” Fluit said. 

Chairman Jim Jibben asked if both of the roads are county roads. Fluit responded saying yes and one is located two miles north of Lennox. 

“It’s probably important that we get to designing better intersections at some places in the county. One of the questions I have though, is I get a number of comments from people about the roundabout that’s at the intersection of Louise Ave and 106, and one of the comments I get from people is their perception or their feelings are that the shoulders are not broad enough over there or that sometimes they feel like it wasn’t designed wide enough and I assume at this intersection there’s going to be a lot of truck traffic and a lot of farm equipment traffic. What can you say to those folks that have those comments or criticism,” asked Commissioner Joel Arends. 

“This was probably one of the big talking points when we did that intersection originally back in 2018. They were saying trucks are going to have a tough time getting through that intersection up there and we have sat up there and watched many long trucks go through that. We’ve seen them with doubles go through there with no issues, and the one that we are constructing now, I believe, is going to be slightly larger. It’s still going to be a single lane roundabout, but it might be slightly larger on the diameter of it,” Fluit responded. 

Commissioner Jim Schmidt made the motion to hire an engineer to begin design engineering, seconded by Arends. Motion approved.

Fluit also requested board action to approve the Highway Superintendent to hire IMEG to do preliminary engineering for structure 42-160-044 for permanent mitigation through the South Dakota Emergency Relief Program for a fee of $130,814.36. 

“This structure is the outlet of Lake Alvin; we just had the emergency repair completed a couple weeks ago on that structure. I think I mentioned last time when I brought up the emergency repair cost to you guys that the state had asked us about doing some mitigation work on this since this is a continuing problem. The state has given us the green light now to ahead and do mitigation on this and the first step of that is going to be doing hydraulics on this, some preliminary engineering to get going on this to find out what we can do for a different structure in this place,” Fluit said. 

Commissioner Arends stated he has spent a lot of time with the people who live next to Lake Alvin and while listening to stories about the area, he has learned that the design of the area goes back to the depression era of the 1930’s and the road is on top of a big dam. 

Motion by Arends, seconded by Landeen. Motion approved.