Your Town Tuesday: Highway 10 Project In Rice Behind Schedule

RICE - This week our "Your Town Tuesday" series takes us to Rice.

This is the second year of a major reconstruction project on Highway 10 in Rice. MnDOT Project Supervisor Joe Cameron says our late wet spring has put the project behind, "It's been kind of a tough spring. We had a fairly aggressive schedule. We planned on starting April 1st, which we could not do. Right now we're about three weeks behind schedule."

Cameron says, even though the weather has put them about three weeks behind schedule, he expects to finish on time, "We are looking for an open to all traffic date on October 25th, with a November 15th completion date for the noise wall, fencing, turf and clean-up."

Cameron says they've made a lot of progress, "we have moved the traffic off of Highway 10 onto a bypass. We've reconstructed the local roads to pretty much their final condition. And now we're moving onto constructing the mainline Highway 10 and the two bridges".

Cameron says, when it's completed, new bridges will carry Highway 10 traffic over Benton County Road 2. Ramps will provide access to local roads. And, new acceleration lanes will be installed.

The total cost for the project is $11.2 million.