Sign up for email newsletters

Sign up for email newsletters

The bulk of the work has been completed on an emergency construction project to halt severe erosion and restore the banks of an open county drain along Interstate 94 in Roseville.

“This project is emergency construction, and the contractor has done excellent work in quick fashion thus far,” Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller said Friday in a news release. “There’s no telling when the recent rapid erosion south of 13 Mile Road that got to within about 25 yards from I-94 would have reached the westbound lanes and resulted in a huge traffic disruption and several million dollars in construction costs. That’s a scenario we’re working to avoid.”

The erosion at the Rohrbeck Extension Drain, south of 13 Mile, was first noticed by city grass cutters about two weeks ago.

L.J. Construction, which was hired by the county to fix the problem, has straightened and stabilized the drain since work started Aug. 22.

The contractor also installed a new catch basin and 70 feet of concrete pipe at the top of the east side to replace a collapsed tap located in the Michigan Department of Transportation right-of-way along the freeway, officials said.

The east bank was restored with dirt moved from the west bank and bolstered by hundreds of boulders – known as rip rap — to protect it from strong flow that would cause new erosion.

The ground around a culvert also has been armored with the limestone boulders, officials said. The other areas of the east bank not needing rip rap have been covered with a blanket of grass seed, mulch and fertilizer.

Officials said they expect that work on the Rohrbeck’s west bank will be completed this week. Four taps that drain water from two nearby parking lots will be improved by creating small channels that will be protected with rip rap to prevent erosion.

The contractor will then move to a location north of 13 Mile, just east of Little Mack Avenue, where the erosion also has advanced to about 25 yards from I-94, officials said. The banks will be stabilized, and maintenance will be completed in a curved portion as the water flows north from 13 Mile to Little Mack.

The project’s price tag, roughly about $200,000 to $300,000, will be paid using existing drain district funds. County Public Works and state officials are in talks for the MDOT to contribute funds.

“With as much as 6 feet of erosion in some locations along the steep east banks this summer, our concern was that higher and stronger flow in the channel following a heavy rain event would easily wash away a lot more of the sand used as backfill when the freeway was built in the 1960s,” Miller said. “So it was time to act, working closely with our partners at the City of Roseville and MDOT.”

The Rohrbeck Drain handles storm water and snow melt runoff from an approximately 3.7-square-mile area.

Emergency steps ordered to prevent erosion from eating into I-94 lanes

Roseville drain repair project along I-94 to cost $200,000 or more

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

Sign up for email newsletters