by Cyn Mackley 12/12/2019 9:25 am
Nobody remembers exactly why a stretch of Coriell Road in Harrison Township got abandoned fifty or so years ago. Only that sometime back in the 1960s the Harrison Township Trustees decided the Township would no longer maintain around 700 yards of the road. For the past six decades, it’s been up to property owners living along the road to do their best to take care of it.
Road maintenance proved to be a difficult do-it-yourself job. According to Scioto County Commissioner Bryan Davis, “It was like the surface of the moon out there.”
Complaints from citizens prompted Davis and County Engineer Darren LeBrun to meet with neighbors in the middle of that rocky road to find out what was going on. Davis said he took the lead from citizens to learn the history of the issue and what they wanted done about it. “They asked. We checked it out.”
Davis discovered that since the stretch of road wasn’t under Township control, they received no State money for its upkeep and they were concerned that the road wouldn’t live up to state standards of safety if they did take it back.
That’s when LeBrun went to work evaluating the safety of the roadbed and culverts and checking to see if any portion of the road was the responsibility of CSX since tracks run parallel to it. Once the road was declared fit, Harrison Twp. Trustees agreed to accept it as their responsibility to maintain. They’ll now be eligible for additional funds from the state to help maintain it.
Davis doesn’t know it the township will choose to use gravel or eventually pave the road, but they have agreed to accept the responsibility to maintain it. Davis praised the citizens, the trustees, and especially LeBrun, for their hard work in taking care of these longstanding issues.
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