The buckling, bending, twisted stretch of Vasquez Canyon Road that captured nationwide interest is rapidly being repaired, straightened and ready to reopen as early as two weeks time.
For months, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works have been pursuing paperwork needed to pursue eminent domain options in order to put shovels in the ground, fire up bulldozers and get the road repaired.
All that changed – for the better recently – when the earth moved again, in the right direction, a Public Works official said.
“So, instead of us going to the mountain, the mountain came to us,” Public Works spokesman Steven Frasher said Thursday.
“When the earth moved, we just kept scooping it up and taking it out of there,” he said.
The result had a stabilizing effect on the ground which paved the way for further road construction to begin – all ahead of schedule.
Public Works officials had promised Agua Dulce residents recently that work would be done by Spring.
“Instead, Mother Nature helped us out. Now, we’re way ahead of schedule,” Frasher said.
County supervisors were poised to condemn certain pieces of land around a buckling twisted section of Vasquez Canyon Road today in an effort to begin grading the land and repairing the road. And, county officials were pursuing that tactic.
In May, county officials committed to fixing the buckled Vasquez Canyon Road announced they would pursue a path to expropriate needed land to get the job done.
County officials felt compelled to pursue eminent domain after efforts to work with the current landowner were stymied, Kerjon Lee, spokesman for the county’s Department of Public Works, said in May.
“Eminent domain appears to be the best way to proceed,” he said at the time.
The recent land shift has rendered all discussion about eminent domain moot.
The stretch of road in question connected Bouquet Canyon Road with Sierra Highway north of Soledad Canyon Road, providing a back way across the valley to residents in northern Santa Clarita Valley and communities to the north.
In November, the road began twisting and crumbling, turning into a geologic pretzel that thwarted roads engineers and drew challenge-seeking skateboarders who made it famous in globally-posted videos.
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