Keeping Our City Going
The Carterville public works department is made up of hard working men dedicated to ensuring our city operates as trouble free as possible. The crew, lead by PW manager Frank Stum handle all of the city's street repairs, as well as fresh water and sewer issues on a daily basis. While all of our workers come together to make a great asset to our city, individually all of our workers bring their own valuable skills to the team. We staff a licensed water operator in charge of keeping your fresh water clean and safe. We have two workers highly experienced in heavy machinery operation as well as street, sewer, and water equipment repair and several workers skilled in mechanics and general labor and repair. Our public works department brings a wealth of skill and knowledge to the residence of Carterville to ensure a smooth running city.
"A gateway to economic opportunity"
CARTERVILLE, Mo. — Highway 249, or the Range Line bypass, will be a gateway to economic opportunity for this former mining area, U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt said Monday.Blunt was in Carterville to tour the latest leg of construction for the route, a $29.1 million project financed largely by federal and state funds. Three bridges that will become on- and off-ramps for the highway are to be completed in April.
The bypass is designed to carry traffic from Business U.S. 71 to Interstate 44 around Joplin. Historically, any place where two avenues of transportation join, commerce develops, Blunt said. “So any time you stretch out, you make a difference where the roads meet,” he said. The bridges span an area of Carterville that was unusable for most purposes. “One of the challenges (to building the highway ramps) is the mining that’s gone on in the past,” Blunt said.
Michael Middleton, resident engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation, said mines were located on old maps, and a lot of drilling was done to detect the exact location of mining pits and tunnels. “We started finding areas where we were hitting large, significant voids,” so the state hired a consultant to do a geological survey, Middleton said. The survey pinpointed how best to situate the bridges over the pockmarked property, he said.
Then construction workers drilled 6-inch-wide holes up to 60 feet deep near the voids and filled them with a concrete mixture. “We found some areas where we dumped multiple truckloads of grout,” Middleton said. He said it probably cost from $6.5 million to $7 million for the ground treatment before construction of the bypass could move forward.
Blunt said he and Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond have included money in the next federal budget for a study of a proposed “west corridor” route for a bypass that would circle Joplin’s west side. Joplin has long sought the Range Line bypass. Mel Walbridge, chairman of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce’s transportation committee, made the tour Monday with Blunt. He said he has been advocating for the bypass since 1985. “I didn’t think I was ever going to see it,” said Walbridge, retired district manager of a gas utility, as he stood in the shadows of the three unfinished bridges.
“This is great just to see it this far.”Workers under contracts amounting to $43 million are building sections of the bypass east of Joplin. In addition to the $29.1 million spent so far at Carterville, about $9.6 million is being spent to grade and build bridges on a phase of the project from Highway 66 (Seventh Street in Joplin) to Webb City’s 17th Street. That project is 95 percent complete. A contractor is working on the roadbed and paving a section from Highway 66 north to Zora Street Road that will cost $4.3 million. Construction of Highway 249, also called the Range Line bypass, east of Joplin, is expected to cost $88.2 million and is scheduled to be competed by 2008.
Public Water System Bacteriologocal Report
