Duncan Hill near Belle Creek to be fixed

There’s been a great deal of consternation over the past several years regarding a stretch of road in Southeastern Powder River County. The road is that from Boyes to Belle Creek, which traverses some rough country and sees a decent amount of truck traffic headed back and forth to the oilfield at Belle Creek. During wet periods, the steep terrain of Duncan Hill has been the site of several truck slide-offs, and the resulting rutted conditions have made for tough driving conditions, according to local residents. Much of the frustration over the road has been vented on Facebook, with pictures of stuck trucks flooding newsfeeds during periods of heavy rainfall.

Megan Dinstel Stephens takes her kids to school in Hammond everyday using the road, and described the road conditions at Duncan Hill during an interview Monday. “Right now there’s a foot tall windrow of mud on the road, which makes it impossible to pass someone coming the other direction. It’s a liability.”

Stephens mentioned that Denbury tries to fix the road as much as possible if one of their trucks gets stuck, but without a substantial amount of gravel or scoria, the resulting rutted mud path isn’t particularly passable. Plus with the cold conditions of late those ruts have turned into a frozen berm, making for road that’s fully capable of tearing up passenger vehicles.

During the exceptionally tough winter last year, the road was closed to truck traffic, but according to Stephens, over the summer little was done to fix the road and plan for future problems.

After talking to the County Commissioners and Road Department Supervisor on Monday, The Examiner learned that plans were already underway to fix the Duncan Hill portion of the road. Road Supervisor Teel Mullanix commented: “We’ve made a deal with Denbury to fix Duncan Hill. They’re going to contribute 20 loads of shale, and we (the county) are going to match that 20 loads. We should be able to fix about a mile of road.”

Mullanix also said that the county was set to start hauling on Tuesday, so the road should be fixed by late in the week.

Teel also said that the county road crew plans to get to all the county roads this fall before freeze-up.

Commissioner Rod Schaffer mentioned that if anyone has concerns about roads, to come on in and see the commissioners.