Beckley motorists have been zigzagging around construction at the old G.C. Murphy location on South Heber Street for weeks as crews construct Raleigh County’s judicial annex.

Now, they’ll have to take another detour at the southern-most end of Heber.

The portion of the road in front of the Beckley Sanitary Board is temporarily closed while city crews work to repair a storm drain, Sanitary Board General Manager Luke Richmond announced Friday.

“There is a storm sewer (pipe) that has started to collapse, right in the middle of the street,” Richmond said. “The storm sewer is 17 to 18 feet deep, so we are looking at one to two weeks of temporary closure at this end where the sanitary board office is located.”

The sidewalks will also be closed, Richmond added.

Richmond recommended that motorists use McCreery, South Fayette or South Kanawha streets as a means of navigating around Heber, which now cannot be accessed via Second Avenue.

“Hopefully the process will go as quickly as possible,” said Richmond. “It is quite inconvenient to some of the businesses along Heber Street.

“We do apologize for any inconvenience to those businesses.”

Richmond said he noticed the problem several weeks ago when South Heber began to “dip” slightly in front of the sanitary board office.

The depression became a safety issue when it grew deeper, so the street was closed.

An inspection via the city camera system revealed that an approximately 50-year-old metal storm pipe installed under Heber Street has rusted on the bottom.

The top of the pipe is caving in, causing the dent in the road, said Richmond.

Much of Beckley’s infrastructure currently in place is “quite a few years old,” he said.

“We could expect some of this problem in other places,” Richmond stated. “This was part of the reason for the Storm Water Utility that was formed two years ago.”

“We average one to two problems a year on something like this,” he added.

In June 2004, 2 drain pipes deep beneath the surface of Second Street collapsed, opening a mammoth hole and forcing traffic to detour onto side streets. As with the current situation, the pipes were buried 15 feet deep.

Because that problem was on a state highway, W.Va. 3, the Division of Highway bore the expense of that repair.

Storm water utility fees will be used to pay for the Heber Street repairs, said Richmond.

Beckley’s was the first sanitary board in the state to receive stimulus money for infrastructure repair.

Stimulus funds are being used to totally fund another city project.