Portion of Hwy KK in Marathon County closed due to culvert collapse

WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) - A section of County Hwy KK near the Wausau School Forest is closed because of a culvert failure. The Marathon County Sherriff’s Office received a call of the incident around 12:45 p.m. Sunday afternoon.

“As the bottom of the pipe starts to rust out, this one we had some piping that formed with the rain we had over the weekend and picked up the velocity in the stream and started pulling more soil way from it,” says Kevin Lang, Deputy Director, Marathon County Highway DPT. “Couple that with the frost coming out of the ground. Those two things kind of combined here.”

Drivers are asked to use the detour until the repairs are completed. It is not known at this time how long those repairs may take. The sheriff’s office asks drivers to make plans to use another route for the next few days.

With the culver collapse, it only adds another headache towards the department.

“It’s been a pretty busy season with our guys patching roads. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been pretty steady with getting freezing temps at night and then thawing out during the day. And that just kind of increases our cycle of how often pavements get that moisture in and freezes overnight and pops out the pavement and creates more and more potholes.”

According to the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office, the road is closed to all traffic between Black Creek Drive and Whisper Rd to allow the Marathon County Highway Department to make repairs. This culvert was scheduled for replacement in June. Crews will work to determine if the construction can be accelerated.

But before any construction can occur, there’s plenty of hurdles for the department to overcome.

“We also have utilities to coordinate with, there’s a gas line that runs in the shoulder of the road here that needs to be cut off temporarily during construction,” says Lang. “There’s a power line that goes underneath here and there’s also fiberoptic facilities.”

There is a posted detour using County Road N to County Road O to County Road B for southbound traffic and County Road B to County Road O to County Road N for northbound traffic.

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