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Geese located near Wingham Farm, east of the Pongratz Road Bridge Replacement Project. Photo: Chase Hendry

According to Washington County’s plan, Panggratz Road between Manning and Buxton will be closed for three months this summer to replace a bridge and a culvert on the gravel road between the two communities. 

According to the online open day established by Washington County Land Use and Transportation (LUT) for the project, although a definite start date has not been listed, road closures are expected to begin this summer and may continue into the fall. After the road reopens until the winter of 2021, further construction may continue. 

According to the county, the bypass construction will transfer road users to Highway 26 for approximately three months this summer, but houses in the affected areas will be open. The culvert project will start first, followed by the bridge replacement project. 

Take a detour around Pangraz Road. The map is provided by Washington County LUT.

According to Washington County LUT, the planned culvert on Pongratz Road is located between Tolke Road and Ardabeth Lane.

“[Culverts] are too small and often clogged. We are replacing culverts with larger metal pipes to improve water flow and let fish pass upstream,” the county said in a statement on the project’s open day. 

"The water flowing through the culvert is an unnamed tributary of West Fork Dairy Creek," Washington County LUT spokesperson Heather Sturgill said in an email to the Bank Post. 

This stream is part of the 231-square-mile Dairy-McKay watershed that flows under the Banks-Vernonia State Trail and is hundreds of feet from the planned culvert. According to county records obtained by Banks Post, it passed through the existing culvert, which is an 18-inch corrugated steel channel, through Pongratz Road. Less than a mile later, the stream flows into West Fork Dairy Creek.

The new culvert will be a 72-inch culvert with a total cost of US$450,000, to be paid for by the Washington County Highway Fund. 

The existing 18-inch culvert will be replaced with a 72-inch culvert. Image courtesy of Washington County LUT.

It is not the only culvert to be replaced in the area, nor is it the only culvert in the area that is considered an obstacle to fish passage in the Dairy-McKay watershed, which drains nearly one-third of the entire Tualatin River basin. According to a 1999 study of the watershed by the Bureau of Land Management, coho salmon, winter harder, trout (the latter two are native to the watershed), and more species use the watershed as their home. 

According to the fish passing assessment conducted by LUT in Washington County in 2006, there are hundreds of culverts in the Dairy-McKay watershed, the largest watershed in the entire Tualatin Basin. The assessment only assessed culverts that can raise fish, and excluded drainage culverts, small culverts considered unlikely to raise fish, and other problematic culvert locations. 

Finally, as part of the 2006 assessment, 164 culverts were surveyed, and 96% of them were considered "total or partial obstacles to the passage of fish."

Another culvert replacement project is expected to take place in the same area this year. This is a culvert owned by the Oregon Department of Transportation in Buxton, which crosses Highway 26 near Fisher Road. The culvert there carries Mendenhall Creek and then flows into West Fork Dairy Creek, which is a more important project in terms of scope and price.

According to the project website, the culvert is planned to be replaced by a single-span bridge and repair the river bed at a cost of 6.6 million U.S. dollars.

East of Tolke Road, Whitcher Creek crosses Pongratz Road. According to county records obtained by Banks Post, the bridge that the creek (also a tributary of West Fork Dairy Creek) passes is a wooden bridge built in 1981. 

The county plans to replace the 25-foot-long weight-constrained structure with a 34-foot-long concrete bridge, which will be able to support heavier vehicles on the bridge. 

The wooden bridge at Whitcher Creek will be replaced by a 34-foot-long concrete bridge. Image courtesy of Washington County LUT.

The total cost of the bridge project is estimated to be US$800,000, to be paid by the Washington County Highway Fund. 

In the past, projects of this scope usually required local community meetings, possibly in the new Hornshuh Creek Fire Station #14 community meeting room less than two miles away. But due to COVID-19, the open day is online. 

Gone are the days when participants in the open day would eat cookies and coffee provided by the county when they learned about the project. Replace them? A recipe for making your own biscuits for you. 

In one part of the online open house—and the open house pages of other county projects—is a "refreshment" tab, in this case a "Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie" recipe. The recipe was submitted by Heather Sturgill.

"The cookie recipe is my favorite part of the open day. I tested every one of them," Sturgeil said. 

Comments and questions about the project can be left on the project open day website.

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