Culvert Clearance at Bowers.
July 3, 2024
On Saturday 29 June 2024 Larry Kunz, George Lewinne, and Larry’s grandaughter Izzy did some exploration and clearing around the clogged entry and exit areas of the blocked culvert that’s been overflowing for the past year or so.
Nobody knew what structure was used for the passage under the trail and thus what the “clearing” process was likely going to be. Larry was able to locate the actual culvert pipe on the exit end and found it clogged with sediment — mostly dirt and stones, and some roots.
Meanwhile, George and Izzy did some serious clearing on the inlet side despite the fact that the granite slabs had apparently been moved significantly out of place by lots of tree roots 1-2″ in diameter. They cut those and continued removing muck, stones and roots in hopes of finding the inlet end of the culvert. No success on that, but in the process they enabled a modest flow to resume that was clearly exiting the culvert pipe they had found on the pond side.
Next step will be to get the granite slabs back to their presumed original locations so that they can finish the root removal, remove more of the muck and hopefully locate the culvert pipe opening on the inlet end. Larry thinks it may be obstructed by one of the granite slabs. Then they will be able to essentially rout out the entire length of the culvert to restore flow.
Some of the granite slab placements on the inlet end seem to have been placed to “block” detritus from getting into the culvert pipe and clogging it. Once the pipe entry is found, they can consider an enhancement to this.
Meanwhile, Izzy dug an exploratory hole in the path where they assumed the culvert would have been placed to see what kind of structure was actually down there. This was before they had located the actual pipe culvert on the exit end (question answered). Her exploratory hole didn’t find this exit, so work will continue that effort just to confirm that the culvert is a pipe end-to-end.
Big thanks to Larry, George and Izzy for their strenuous and messy work.
