Golder was awarded the American Council of Engineering Companies of Vermont Grand Award under the Water Resources category for Protecting Crossett Brook and Crossett Hill Road from a recurring landslide. This project in the Town of Duxbury, Vermont demonstrates a design that addressed perpetual habitat degradation and prioritized public safety and rapid implementation, while using existing geospatial data to lower overall costs.
“Our team was able to effectively manage and communicate challenges that arose during construction and implement solutions that resulted in a successful project and a happy client,” said Megan Melendy, Golder’s Project Manager.
Crossett Brook, a moderate-sized stream originating on Camel’s Hump, and a slowly moving landslide slope below Crossett Hill Road, had been in a figurative “tug-of-war” for decades. The severe storms and flooding in 2017 caused great concern to the stability of the slope encroaching the stream and operation of the roadway. Fortunately, the Town secured a Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster grant to design a long-term solution. By October 2020, roughly three years after the storms, completion of a carefully-executed analysis, design, and construction process now allows Crossett Brook and Crossett Hill Road to withstand 100-year storm events.
“This project exemplifies the value of engaging qualified and experienced engineers from project initiation through construction,” explained Chris Benda, Golder’s Project Director. “Identifying an unexpected historic landslide hazard during the scoping phase of the project allowed the team to address its impact early in the design saving our client time and money.”
The Crossett Brook and Crossett Hill Road project demonstrates engineering excellence by addressing public safety concerns through enhanced repairs to previously troublesome landslide and improving traffic safety by upgrading the roadway cross section, enhancing the drainage, and adding new guardrails.
The Golder team used existing geospatial data to lower project costs. The LiDAR mapping reduced conventional surveying costs and identified “big picture” surface deformation of a much larger historic landslide uphill of the project site, which allowed the project team to address the entire landslide at an early stage of the design.
Despite identifying the unexpected historic landslide hazard, which tripled the height of the slope in need of stabilization and required multiple permits and multi-stakeholder input and review, the design and construction were completed on schedule and within budget.
