DOT project drags on, leaving Fayetteville neighborhood cut off, without direction

An unexpected road closure in Cumberland County had residents scrambling to find another way home.

Old Vander Road has been closed from Clinton Road to Old Blakefield Drive in Fayetteville for three weeks after what was supposed to be a two-day repair job hit a snag.

The state Department of Transportation is installing underground pipes in the area to alleviate flooding. But crews found a 12-inch Fayetteville Public Works Commission water main in DOT's right of way, DOT spokesman Andrew Barksdale said.

"If the water line were below our cross-line pipe, as we anticipated, we would have been done in two or three days, and we would have elevated our pipe and put in a larger one," Barksdale said.

While the project gets sorted out, the 1,000 or so residents in the Blakefield subdivision and visitors have had a hard time trying to figure out how to get through.

Damon Wyche, president of the Blakefield Homeowners Association, said that vehicles would find the road closed with no direction for how to get around it.

"There's no detour to let them know which way to go, to re-route [them] to get to the neighborhood," Wyche said. "You have different roadways. You can get confused, so that could throw you off. So, what could take you two minutes can take you anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour to get to the neighborhood."

The DOT erected detour signs on Thursday to alleviate that problem. But local residents still have to deal with the closed road.

Barksdale said crews are doing a work-around so the PWC doesn't have to move its water main, which would have left the Blakefield community without water for four days.

"We're sorry that there's been some delays in completing this drainage improvement project," he said. "We hope that, by the end of next week, we can reopen that road, unless we have a lot of days of rainy weather."