By Angela Hatton
Golden Pond, KY – The new Kentucky Highway 68/80 corridor through the Land Between the Lakes is open, but completion of two new bridges over the lakes is still several years away. Kentucky Transportation Department Spokesman Keith Todd says engineers are still working on completing the design and conducting environmental tests. Todd says officials hesitate to give an exact completion date.
"The large amount of flooding that we had back in the spring because of the heavy rains at Nashville. Y'know something like that comes through. There's things like that that can interfere with work. Just, on a large project like this, there's just more opportunities for those kind of things to come along."
Todd says officials are looking at late 2011 or early 2012 to begin building the bridges over Kentucky and Barkley lakes. When work begins, the bridges will be complete in three to five years. Todd says at the project's peak, it should employ several hundred construction workers.