Inquirer: Moon Road construction debris remnants will be removed

Some day, I will write the phrase “Moon Road widening project” for the last time, hopefully not from a bed at Columbus Hospice on that road. Really, it seems like I’ve been writing about it for a lifetime.

Anyway, I heard from a Concerned Reader named Carolyn about a problem over there.

“Moon Road is supposedly nearing completion. However, on the corner of Moon Road and Moon Circle there is a triangular piece of property that is being used as a dump. There are huge piles of dirt which most of the time obstruct the view when making a left turn onto Moon Road.

“There are also brick piles, stranger looking plastic things and construction items. It is apparent that it is someone's junk dump. Ownership is not known but whoever it is should be ashamed of their mess and be aware of the liability it creates. Oh, when it rains mud from the dirt covers the roadway. YUK!”

Let’s back up a minute and see what we have here.

Discussions of widening Moon Road date back to at least 1993, when the plan was to widen it to five lanes with a median. That’s what the state DOT wanted to do, and the state would pay almost all the cost of it. But city leaders decided widening it to five lanes would be too intrusive to homeowners and would have a negative impact on adjacent neighborhoods. That was five or six years ago.

So the city said thanks but no thanks to the state and eventually decided to pay the $5 million it would take to widen it to three lanes, with turn lanes at all intersections. But it wouldn’t happen quickly. The project was approved in 2013, which began the long process of right-of-way acquisition, moving of utilities, drainage work, new curbs and gutters, traffic signs and signals and pavement marking.

And it was (and is) quite intrusive on some of the homeowners.

I remember one family coming before Columbus Council complaining that the road would come so close to their house, which sits well below the level of the road, a guard rail would have to be installed to keep drunken drivers from landing in their living room. They wanted the city to buy their house. The city, as I recall, declined the offer.

So just adding the third lane was intrusive enough. But there were other temporary intrusions, which brings us to the pile of junk on the side of the road. During a road widening project like this, the city will take temporary control of some land, easements, to use for access to certain places and for staging areas, or places to pile junk up.

That’s what we’re seeing at the corner of Moon Road and Moon Circle (which isn’t a circle, but no one asked me).

Rick Jones, planning director for the city, assured me that the project isn’t quite done yet, but when it is, all the easements will be cleaned up.

This story was originally published May 1, 2016 at 9:24 PM with the headline "Inquirer: Moon Road construction debris remnants will be removed."