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Friday, September 3, 2010 | Serving Del Rio and Val Verde County: Since 1929
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Qualia Relief Route Update
Published July 19, 2010
Work on the Qualia Relief Route in south Del Rio is continuing, members of the city council learned recently.
Salvador Mercado, project manager for the Qualia Relief Route, gave an update on the relief route project during the council’s July 13 meeting. Mercado is an engineer with the company MACTEC, hired as the project’s designers by the city.
The relief route became necessary after construction of the new Del Rio Port of Entry closed Rio Grande Road and access to Spur 239 in south Del Rio.
“The plans are 90 percent complete, pretty close to finished,” Mercado told the council during his presentation.
“One of the things that has happened, when we started on the project, in order for the city of Del Rio to take advantage of this project and take advantage of the federal dollars, part of the study was to include an environmental document, and that’s usually the thing that slows down a project, and right now, we’re still moving on that,” Mercado said.
Mercado said the environmental assessment would be delivered to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Laredo District offices at the end of the week for review.
“They normally take about six weeks to make a determination or a recommendation, and after that, it will come back to us, and we’ll bring it back to the city and discuss and make sure we got everything as requested changed. Then we’ll take it back to TxDOT. TxDOT will then take it to the federal highway administration and let them review it,” Mercado said.
Mercado told the council the environmental assessment review process usually takes about a year to complete.
“Our goal was to have the plans ready, and that’s still our goal. In six months, we’ll have the plans ready to be sitting in (City Engineer Robert) Parker’s office, ready to be let,” Mercado added.
Mercado said after the environmental assessment document is finalized “and get everybody to sign off on it,” the city and the MACTEC will approach two private property owners in the area and begin the process of right-of-way acquisition.
“Then we can go to let. The plan right now is to let sometime in July of next year. That’s basically when the construction will actually start, if everything goes right,” Mercado said.
Councilman Mike Wrob asked Mercado if the year timeframe for approval of the environmental document is “realistic.”
Mercado said he believed it was.
“So you’re pretty much on schedule then?” asked Mayor Roberto “Bobby” Fernandez.
“Yes, we are, yes, and Mr. Parker has the schedule, we keep up with it, and TxDOT wants to make sure we’re on schedule also, because they want to make sure those funds are allocated for the Qualia project,” Mercado said.
Councilman Al Arreola asked how long the project would take once all the preliminary work was completed.
“The project itself would probably take less than a year, and we’re going to work with Mr. Parker to force that schedule real tight. There is no road out there, so they should be able to get out there, do the work, not interfere with anybody and hopefully, open that road as quickly as possible,” Mercado said.
Mercado said the actual length of the relief route project is about 3,000 feet.
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