FERN PRAIRIE — For decades, the single-lane, dead-end road was an adequate street for Richard Landis and the three other households that lived along it. But after a new subdivision was started at the end of the street, the roadway has crumpled under the weight of the increased traffic and bigger vehicles using the road.
Landis and his neighbors live along Northeast 312th Avenue, a 10-foot-wide road less than 500 feet long in rural Clark County. About three years ago, a developer connected a 20-foot-wide private road to the end of Northeast 312th and started building an eight-house subdivision.
“The development isn’t the issue,” Landis said, it’s the inadequacy of the road and what the residents perceive as willful ignorance of the situation by county officials.
The neighbors say that over the last three years the large vehicles required to build the development have torn up the road, creating big potholes and, in the winter, huge mudholes.
“Garbage trucks now are coming … and bigger trucks have dismantled the road,” said Middy Clark. “The road got so bad the postmaster said they wouldn’t deliver to us.”
The Camas Post Office couldn’t verify the residents’ claims. But Clark, Landis, and Bernie Ritter all said their postal carrier twice in about the last two years threatened to stop delivering mail to their street because the road damage was so bad. She never had to act on the threat because Clark County Public Works fixed the road, but with only temporary treatments.
“They keep patching it and it’s like putting a Band-Aid on cancer,” Ritter said.
Landis said vehicles frequently drive off the roadway and onto his property tearing up the land. He’s put posts in the ground to mark his property line, but he said people have just run them over. On top of that, the road technically has a speed limit of 50 mph. The neighbors said that was never an issue when it was a dead-end street, but now that another road has extended off it, some people go exceptionally fast.
Landis and his neighbors said they want to know if the road is up to current standards given the traffic volumes it now bears or if it should have been widened to accommodate the new development. They also want to see it rebuilt in a way that will handle the heavier vehicles that are now using it, along with erosion controls. They also want a lower speed limit posted and possibly speed bumps installed.
Over about the last three years, Landis and his neighbors say they’ve brought these topics up at Clark County Council meetings, in letters to various county departments and with some lower-level employees, but to no avail.
“Our frustration is we’ve never gotten a single answer on any of our questions,” Landis said. “Only Mark McCauley (former county manager) was interested and two weeks later he was fired.”
Landis also said District 4 County Councilor Eileen Quiring hasn’t shown any interest in the matter. Quiring also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“Frankly, they don’t live out here so they don’t care. They’re more worried about putting in a bike path,” Ritter said.
Clark County Public Works spokesman Jeff Mize said the department has had “significant communications” with Landis and others living in the area.
“These communications have included Heath Henderson, the Public Works Director, as well as our road superintendents and our road maintenance crew chief for that area,” he said in an email. “Mark McCauley, the former county manager, was inquiring about Northeast 312th Avenue last year, just to further illustrate how much attention the county has paid to this issue.”
He also said that the county has filled potholes on the road in 2017 and as recently as late March. The county chip-sealed the road in 2005 and plans to do so again next year.
Chip-sealing is a process commonly used on rural roads where asphalt is sprayed down, then covered in a layer of crushed rock. That rock is then pressed down with heavy equipment and sprayed with another fixative.
Upon hearing the news, Landis didn’t show much enthusiasm. He said they were told chip-sealing was scheduled for this summer.
“They’ve been telling us ‘next year’ for the last 18 months,” he said.
