In a chart accompanying Prince’s blog, Colorado is shown as having submitted 30 grant requests totaling just over $1.1 billion. They include a request for up to $200 million to begin the first phase of bus-car pool-toll lanes on U.S. 36, and a $62.5 million request for safety and improvement work on CO 119 near Black Hawk.

TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.

CO 119 into Black Hawk is a winding two-lane highway.

An eclectic partnership of agencies with broadly different agendas is working together on one multi-purpose project that addresses their divergent needs – transportation improvements and related road safety work on CO 119 into Black Hawk that will help start to clean a polluted creek dead from the leftovers of the mining industry and help preserve wildlife.

It’s called the North Clear Creek Restoration Project.

The complete package developed by the North Clear Creek Mitigation Advisory Committee is estimated to cost $82.7 million, and the Colorado Department of Transportation is taking a gamble that it can win a $62.5 million discretionary grant from the federal stimulus program to enable it to do the entire project at once.

Other agencies, including CDOT, the local casinos through the Silver Dollar Metropolitan District, the State Division of Wildlife and the Department of Public Health and Environment, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are on board with funding contributions.

Read information about the total project and the grant application here.

Also serving on the committee are representatives of the Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado-Denver, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal Highway Administration, the state Department of Natural Resources- Division of Reclamation and Mining Safety (DRMS), City of Black Hawk, Gilpin County and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Click here to pull up a map showing all of the projects ranging from Black Hawk to Golden within the canyon and along U.S. 40.

But if the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is administering the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, doesn’t select the CO 119 project in the crowded national competition for grants, the partners’ antes will still go toward paying for a smaller piece of the overall project.

View a computer simulation of the widened CO 119 and two new bridges that will eliminate three dangerous curves.

The Main Street South segment of the project is only a mile and a half long but includes a realignment of the winding canyon road into the casino town that will aim straight across North Clear Creek on two new bridges to eliminate three dangerous curves. It will also extend the four-laning of the highway a bit farther south from the town. It will have a median divider with full lighting. Extensive retaining walls will be built to hold the widening.

But the highway work will also enable some much-anticipated environmental cleanup work to start as well.

Acidic discharge from mine tailings pours out of the National Tunnel in Black Hawk and has killed off North Clear Creek for fish life.

The initial project also will include adding more mobile phone coverage deep in the canyon, and bring some Intelligent Transportation Systems networking to the corridor.

Russel Cox, CDOT’s resident engineer for the Foothills Residency that covers the corridor, said he believes that with or without the stimulus grant, this first segment can proceed to construction. CDOT already has obtained the Federal Highway Administration’s permission to proceed once the limited funding is secured.

A bighorn sheep watches traffic on CO 119 from a rocky perch above the highway.

“We’ve got something put together that’s perfect and everyone loves it,” Cox said. “We gave the casinos kicking in money, the health department, the EPA – it’s a Superfund site. It’s logical in the we have excess rock and they need rock for their end of the project so it saves both of us money.

The original estimate for this first Main Street South segment was $35 million to $40 million, but Cox is hopeful that bids will come in lower.

Weather permitting, the work will take place between mileposts 3 to 4.1. That stretch is just about halfway between the U.S. 6 junction and Black Hawk.

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“Since the window of opportunity to pave in warm temperatures is relatively small, it is important that our crews complete the work now to repair this deteriorating section of CO 119,” said Don Miller, CDOT’s maintenance supervisor. “We realize there will be significant delays during the project and we will do our best to minimize traffic impacts and complete the work quickly.”

During the project, motorists can expect single-lane alternating traffic from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day. Delays of 20 minutes are possible and alternate routes are strongly advised. CDOT would like to remind motorists to “Slow for the Cone Zone” and obey all construction signs and flaggers.

All work should be complete by 2 p.m. Wednesday. If inclement weather causes a schedule change, CDOT will announce new information on it.