I have been a daily traveler on the River Road (Route 136) for over 15 years. It’s busy all the time, heavily used by local folks, Bell Farms, L.L. Bean workers, UPS drivers and others trying to make time, making a living. 

I am not a civil engineer. I certainly do not understand the details of road construction and riverbank conservation. It was necessary to reroute the road away from the banking for sure, but when the crew started to clear-cut the trees and remove all of the vegetation from the banking I wondered what they were doing. All I know is that trees and shrubs growing on a banking serve to hold the soil together by their roots. So, from that point, the banking became weaker when it should have been made stronger. 

What came next was even stranger: a crane pile-driving huge sheets of corrugated steel down into that weakened banking, effectively slicing the sandy clay soil like the proverbial hot knife through butter.

Maine DOT was in charge of the project, which I think was poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly supervised and, as a result of this poor work, hundreds of us are made to take alternative routes to work and home over back roads that haven’t seen asphalt in a generation, clogging the roads of Lisbon or wandering around in the woods of Durham and New Gloucester trying to find our way to work, for who knows how long. 

Someone needs to answer for this situation.

Tim Schmidt, Pownal