County enlists Guard to help with improvements

County Road 532, just east of Pocahontas, can sometimes present an odd problem for travelers.

When heavy rains fall the road is submerged under water. That's not unusual in itself, but what is unusual is why: For much of its stretch through the northern Cape Girardeau County hills, County Road 532 shares its path with a creek bed, at some points looking much less like a road than a natural, rock-bed creek.

"The first time I went up there and took a look at that I said 'You have got to be kidding me. How can we have a road in a creek? Or is it a creek in a road?'" said presiding commissioner Gerald Jones.

The county government has looked at somehow raising the road out of the creek bed for the past couple of years, and now the project might be close to reality. Using the help of the Army National Guard 1140th Engineers Battalion in Cape Girardeau, the county hopes to start on a project that would change the road's path to one that follows the creek bank by this fall, instead of sharing the creek's bed.

Under a proposed agreement the county would supply materials and fuel and build a bridge to cross the creek, while the National Guard would provide the labor, Jones said. The county is currently waiting for a National Guard officer to approve the project.

County Road 532 wouldn't be the first joint county-Guard project -- the two worked together several years ago to raise County Road 525 at Neely's Landing over the Mississippi River's common high-water levels.

Highway department supervisor Scott Bechtold said the County Road 532 project would have been started sooner but there are few residences that rely on that stretch of road as a key travel route. However, some property owners are considering building homes in the area, said Bechtold, and they will need constant access to emergency services.

County Road 532 is passable most of the time, said Bechtold, but on those occasions when heavy rains pelt the area the water running through Lovejoy Creek is too high to allow vehicle passage.

The cost of the project to the county hasn't yet been determined, Bechtold said, but in addition to building a bridge to cross the creek, the county will also supply culverts for drainage. Right-of-way has already been donated, Bechtold said.

Once the project gets started it will take a year to complete, said Jones.

Staff Sgt. Heather Carden, public affairs officer with the Cape Girardeau 1140th, said she wasn't able to confirm the county's request for assistance on the project because the officer who approves such projects out of Washington, D.C., was unavailable Friday. However Carden said such projects do happen -- they're called "innovative readiness training."

The projects allow Guard soldiers to get hands-on training close to home while helping local communities, said Carden.

"They're great opportunities," Carden said of the projects.

Bechtold said he's not sure why the County Road 532 was built in the creek, but the road is located in the area of an early Spanish land grant. He speculated the road may have been built on the path of least resistance by early settlers.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

For more about County Road 532 and driving on the bed of Lovejoy Creek see the blog Go exploring in Cape County by James Baughn.