The Rocks Road Improvement Advisory Committee is torn between options for dealing with the sinking portions of Route 24 where the road goes through Rocks State Park.
Robert Taylor, member of the Whiteford/Cardiff/Pylesville/Street Community Council, visits the advisory committee to represent the community council. He reported on the advisory committee's last meeting during Thursday evening's community council meeting.
According to Taylor, portions of Route 24 along Rocks State Park are sinking because of erosion in the stream. The State Highway Administration, he said after the community council meeting, previously identified two areas in particular in dire need of improvement.
The Rocks Road advisory committee was appointed more than a year ago to monitor the sinking road situation and to give input on the state's various options for dealing with it.
Section A is by Rockridge Road and Section G is below Cherry Hill Road, he said. The option presented in the advisory committee's May meeting, he said, was to build a 1,000-foot long retaining wall along Section A. The wall would help support the road and be designed to look like stone abutments, much like the railroad bridges in the area.
Options for Section G, however, are much more complicated. The state identified three options. To build a stone wall, reroute the road into or reroute the stream.
The latter, Taylor said, is "not an option" because it was discovered that the water would affect 50 to 60 acres of land. Neither is the retaining wall, he added.
"They're not sure the wall is going to work," he said.
So far, according to Taylor, SHA has not decided which option to take on Section G but has decided to move forward with the plans for Section A. He expects them to start next spring or summer.
The situation worsened last September, he said, when a particularly bad series of storms flooded the road more than the state expected and "blew out figures." The state had also installed a guardrail to help ease the situation, but Taylor said that, too, was sinking.
Members of the Save the Rocks Committee attend the meetings and recommend the situation be left alone, according to Taylor.
"They don't want to lose the atmosphere of the state park," he said.
Taylor said he understands that point of view but that "something [has] to be done."