WRIGHTSTOWN, WI (WTAQ) –
The Brown County Highway Department has been forced to close a portion of County Highway ZZ in Wrightstown.
The road is closed for safety reasons.
“That road is just too close to the Fox River and the problems are getting worse and worse.”
Brown County Public Works Director Paul Fontecchio says between Sunday night and Tuesday morning, the area between Mallard Road to Meadowlark Road has become problematic due to a landslide.
“It opened up to a three-foot-deep crack. The river side slid about a foot down and three feet wide so it is a pretty good landslide.”
He says they were forced to put barricades up and come up with a short term fix or band-aid approach for now.
“When you have a vertical drop-off at the edge of the road and then you get secondary cracks in the road, so we can’t take any chances with that if it goes in the middle of the night and cars go sailing off, that stuff happens, unfortunately.”
The county will look to come up with a plan to get by until 2021. A funded project is scheduled to take place. Fontecchio says at that time, they will pull the road away from the river to eliminate the problem.
“The challenge we have is to try to get it passable again. These are bandaids, it is not like we are going to get out there tomorrow to fix this, it is not a simple fix.”
For now, access to homes in this area will be allowed to residents, with the exception of 1893 County Highway ZZ south to 1813.
