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Construction on Young Road began this week and will continue through the end of October.

The project will slow traffic significantly, but Haines Borough public facilities director Ed Coffland said they plan to keep one lane open at all times.

Nine properties along the road will be hooked onto a temporary above-ground water line during construction. That temporary system “won’t be different from the current system (residents) have now” in terms of service, project engineer Dakota LaFranboise said.

While installing the line on Wednesday morning, the construction team shut off water to 15 properties on East Barnett Drive, West Barnett Drive, West Mathias Avenue, East Mathias Avenue and Young Road, according to a post on the Haines Borough 2020 Storm Repairs Facebook page.

Southeast Roadbuilders gave affected residents a 24-hour notice through social media, postcards, flyers, and knocking on doors, and they will follow this protocol for any future shutoffs. Coffland said he expects there might be one more shutoff toward the end of the project, when these properties are switched from the temporary water line to the new permanent line.

But residents “shouldn’t ever be without water for longer than a few hours,” LaFranboise said.

The work on Young Road is one of the most extensive – and costliest – projects repairing damage from the December 2020 storm. Haines Borough contracts and grants administrator Carolann Wooton said the borough expects to spend between $10 and $12 million, which will be reimbursed by FEMA, on disaster recovery projects, with the $2.3-million Young Road project accounting for somewhere between a sixth and a quarter of that total.

The only project that might run up a higher bill are the Porcupine Road repairs, Wooton said.

The Young Road reconstruction will include the repaving of the entire road and major improvements to drainage – in the form of both underground piping and curb and gutter work.

The 2020 storm “really tore up that road and some of the underground utilities quite a bit,” Coffland said. Southeast Roadbuilders has been contracted to carry out the reconstruction, and they will replace “stressed and compromised” piping that was exposed during the storm.

They will also reroute water and sewer lines onto borough property to facilitate easier repairs in the future, and address the major culprit for the 2020 storm damage: a four-foot-wide culvert that got plugged up with gravel and debris during the heavy rain.

Before the storm, the culvert’s opening had had a makeshift screen designed to catch debris; Coffland said that will be replaced with a higher-quality “trash rack” that is “actually designed for the purpose.” The old screen was “a homemade kind of thing that didn’t work properly,” Coffland said.

Coffland said the team started welding pipes on Monday. On-the-ground work was scheduled to begin next week but began ahead of time on Wednesday.

The team will first remove all the existing pavement and concrete, then replace the underground utilities – the sanitary sewer, storm sewer, and water systems. Then they’ll build curbs and gutters and finally lay new pavement, assuming they manage to get to that stage before the ground freezes.