Daily Gleaner, November 22, 2008
Concrete road for Fern Gully next year
A
section of the road leading through Ocho
Rios' long-standing tourist attraction, Fern Gully, is
to be concreted similarly to parts of the Bog Walk gorge.
According
to Stephen Shaw, communications manager at
the National Works Agency (NWA):
"We
will be putting in a rigid pavement,
that is concrete, on a section of about
one-and-a-half
kilometres long. We also have
to do some significant improvement regarding
drainage, with over
one kilometre of U-drain to be put in."
Additionally, sections of the road will be realigned, which may require the acquisition of adjacent properties, Shaw revealed.
The
proposed repairs to the Fern Gully form
part of a wider plan to rehabilitate
and restore the
roads leading from the
district of Colegate, situated just above
Fern Gully, down to Milford Road in
Ocho Rios, totalling about 3.6 kilometres. A
culvert on Milford Road is also to be
given
attention.
Shaw
said the contracts had already been put
to tender but work was not expected to
begin until
early in 2009.
Several
sections of the road leading from Milford
Road up through Fern Gully have been in
a
deplorable condition for several months.
The decline in the condition of the
road was triggered
by severe flooding in April and made worse by subsequent showers.
Several
residents in Milford, Harrison Town and
Green Pond have voiced their disgust at
the
length of time it was taking for repairs to be carried out.
There
are several potholes in some areas of
Fern Gully while in others, the road is
uneven, as
several upper layers of pavement have been washed away.
Along Milford Road and Harrison Town Road, both leading to Fern Gully, there are several areas where the road has been completely eroded.
