After being closed for nearly two months for a drainage project, West Mountain Drive has partially reopened with other portions expected to reopen in the near future.
On Thursday, Hot Springs National Park posted on its Facebook page that the portion of West Mountain Drive between Whittington Avenue and Prospect Avenue has reopened.
Mark Scott, the park's chief of maintenance, told The Sentinel-Record Friday that progress on the project is moving toward its conclusion, but has taken longer than expected.
"It's going slower than we had hoped, but it is moving forward and I think we're only a few days from having everything back opened up," Scott said.
"One of the biggest issues we ran into was the hillside is so steep when they were digging, we had debris going down the hillside into the road, and that was the main reason for closing it -- for public safety -- we didn't want anyone driving through there with rocks running down into the road," he said.
"Not only for the public safety but for the workers' safety working right on the road, too. They had quite a bit of rockwork to do right along the edge of the road and it's just not very safe having them work on the edge of the road with traffic going through there," he said.
"They've made it up to the Summit Road now and that's what they're finishing up, putting the stone wall back in place and getting the Summit Road ready to open up," Scott said. "To this point, they're finished on the main road, and that's why we opened it back up."
He said they were "really pushing" the contractors to get it open as soon as possible.
Scott said the project will be a good thing for the park and its visitors.
The contractor has been working to dig up drainage culverts that are believed to have been installed in the 1930s, which were made out of clay tile pipe and metal.
"It's going to be a huge benefit," Scott said, noting some of the old culverts had failed, and were small while the new ones will be bigger.
"That's going to avoid the flooding that comes down the mountain -- the old pipes weren't big enough to take all the water if we had a really heavy rain, so this is going to get the water off the mountain to avoid going over the road," Scott said.
The new culverts "should last that long, if not longer," Scott said when asked if the new ones would hold up as long as the old ones. "Some of the pipe that was taken out was metal pipe which was already rusted through, and we've put in concrete pipe now, so it should last longer than the old pipe," he said.
"We're just ready for it to be open and for this project to be completed, but I think the visitors -- a lot of it they won't see because all the work was underground -- but it will be a noticeable difference when we get heavy rain," Scott said.