Keen Road Culvert Replacement

Keen Road, a local, rural roadway in East Vincent Township is scheduled to be repaved in 2025. There are four culverts under Keen Road that are in poor condition and need to be replaced, with one of them containing an active stream traveling through it. There are erosion issues and safety issues with culverts on both sides of the road, with erosion beginning to undermine the road itself.

Princeton Hydro was contracted by East Vincent Township to develop construction plans to replace the culverts and address the safety and erosion issues before Keen Road is repaved later in 2025. Princeton Hydro had the project area surveyed and used public LiDAR data to build a watershed model to calculate the flow through each of the culverts to determine if they were sized correctly. Without any record drawings of these culverts, Princeton Hydro had to work from scratch to understand how the system currently works and if there would be any ways to improve the performance of the system. Princeton Hydro also coordinated with local and state permitting agencies to attain the necessary permits to install the new culverts.

At the request of the local residents, Princeton proposed to modify the existing layout of the culverts to eliminate the need for two guide rail structures. Princeton Hydro also designed a series of grade control structures along the eastern upstream side of the project area to eliminate the source of the erosion and provide erosion protection along the roadway to stop the undermining of the road. The grade control structures reduce the velocity of the runoff to reduce erosion while also providing armor to provide further protection against erosion. Finally, erosion control measures such as a rip rap apron were designed at the discharge to provide protection from erosion on the downstream side of Keen Road.

The project was put out to bid in November 2024 and is scheduled for construction this Spring 2025.