Clarksburg Looking at Pricey Replacement for Culvert

The state has told the town it has to put in a temporary bridge to replace cast iron boiler being used a culvert on Gates Avenue.

CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Town officials are hoping its state representatives can run interference with the state Department of Environmental Protection on a costly culvert replacement on Gates Avenue.

The state is calling for a temporary bridge on the dead-end road that could cost two to three times what the town has budgeted for repairs.

"We don't have that kind of money," said Selectmen Chairman Carl McKinney last week. "We've got about $106,000, $114,000, which is just barely enough to repair the culvert in place."

McKinney said the town has spoken with state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi and was expected to meet with state Sen. Benjamin B. Downing on Tuesday to see if they could help the town find alternatives

The culvert is actually an old cast-iron boiler from a factory that's been holding up the road for decades. It has been failing for some time and was further exacerbated by Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011. The town had hoped to receive some federal or state funding for storm damage but that did not come through.

The plan had been to replace it with a new slip culvert and repair headwalls last year. But the state DEP is calling for a temporary bridge for now because the planned culvert would be too small for the fish, said McKinney.

An engineer who reviewed the site has given a low-end estimate of $280,000 for the installation of a temporary bridge, with $400,000 on the high side.

The cost to repair the East Road bridge last year was $275,000.

2024 Year in Review: North Adams' Year of New Life to Old Institutions

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:42AM / Thursday, January 02, 2025

President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz poses in one of the new patient rooms on 2 North at North Adams Regional Hospital.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — On March 28, 2014, the last of the 500 employees at North Adams Regional Hospital walked out the doors with little hope it would reopen. 

 

But in 2024, exactly 10 years to the day, North Adams Regional was revived through the efforts of local officials, BHS President and CEO Darlene Rodowicz, and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who was able to get the U.S. Health and Human Services to tweak regulations that had prevented NARH from gaining "rural critical access" status.

 

It was something of a miracle for North Adams and the North Berkshire region.

 

Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, under the BHS umbrella, purchased the campus and affiliated systems when Northern Berkshire Healthcare declared bankruptcy and abruptly closed in 2014. NBH had been beset by falling admissions, reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, and investments that had gone sour leaving it more than $30 million in debt. 

 

BMC had renovated the building and added in other services, including an emergency satellite facility, over the decade. But it took one small revision to allow the hospital — and its name — to be restored: the federal government's new definition of a connecting highway made Route 7 a "secondary road" and dropped the distance maximum between hospitals for "mountainous" roads to 15 miles. 

 

"Today the historic opportunity to enhance the health and wellness of Northern Berkshire community is here. And we've been waiting for this moment for 10 years," Rodowicz said. "It is the key to keeping in line with our strategic plan which is to increase access and support coordinated countywide system of care." 

 

The public got to tour the fully refurbished 2 North, which had been sectioned off for nearly a decade in hopes of restoring patient beds; the official critical hospital designation came in August.