BETHEL – Work on a nearly $9 million Maine Department of Transportation project to redo just over 2 miles of Route 2 between Bethel and Gilead starts next week.

Last week, MDOT signed a contract with K & K Excavation Inc. of Turner, which submitted the lowest bid of $8,982,910. Work is expected to be completed on Aug. 14, 2009.

Other bids submitted were $10.23 million by Sargent Corp. of Bangor, and $10.33 million by Bridgecorp of Augusta.

The work will fix a section that has been the scene of many accidents – mostly involving tractor-trailer trucks – due to its deteriorating surface, sharp curves, narrowness and northern exposure.

The department is also replacing Pleasant River Bridge, relocating a small stream that empties into the river, and moving the highway 65 feet south, away from the homes of Stephen and Lise McLain and David and Deborah Luxton.

But the major reason behind the stiff price tag is a mountain of ledge that has to be blasted and removed.

Starting from just east of Fleming Road, the 2.18-mile project is perched on a steep wall between Peabody and Pickett Henry mountains and the Androscoggin River. It shares the location with the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad.

“This is what happens when you try to build a road between a rock and a hard place,” MDOT assistant division engineer Mark Hume said Friday of the price tag. “It’s between a mountain of ledge and the railroad and river. We’re blowing a lot of ledge, about 26,000 yards of rock. That’s a lot of rock, no doubt.”

Hume said the Turner firm would begin clearing land during the week of Sept. 11, then follow that the week of Sept. 17 with drainage and stream diversion work. Ledge work will be done through the winter depending on weather, but, Hume said, it will take a while.

“We have to clean the dirt off the ledge, survey it, blast, then survey it again to determine quantity,” he said.

In addition to traffic flaggers, the railroad company is supplying railroad flaggers/inspectors, because they’re required anytime construction is within 50 feet of the track.

Forty percent of the work being done is within 50 feet of the tracks, which carry two trains a day at 40 mph, Hume said.

Another Route 2 project in Dixfield was expected to go out to bid by Saturday, but it’s been delayed, Hume said.

That $4.85 million project will fix nearly two miles, starting from a half mile north of the intersection of Canton Point Road and Route 2 at Twin Rivers Lumber and the MDOT Region 3 complex to where the last project ended.

Work is expected to start sometime this fall on that two-year project.