Photo by Deb Gau A winding gravel stretch of North Bruce Street, known as “Skunk Hollow Road,” has been the subject of complaints to the city. Marshall City Engineer Jason Anderson said residents along the road have lots of concerns about washboarding and the dust raised by hundreds of vehicles a day.

MARSHALL — It’s a winding gravel road in the floodplain of the Redwood River. But the route known as “Skunk Hollow Road” still gets lots of traffic, which causes problems for local property owners, said Marshall city engineer Jason Anderson.

“We do receive quite a few complaints from residents,” about dust and washboarding on the road, Anderson said. City staff said roughly 500 vehicles a day travel on the gravel road, which is technically part of North Bruce Street.

But finding a solution for the complaints is tricky because of a combination of factors like cost and traffic levels. After discussion at a Tuesday meeting, Marshall City Council members couldn’t commit to a plan beyond maintaining the current gravel road.

“There is no easy solution. That’s why we keep kicking the can down the road,” said council member Glenn Bayerkohler.

Anderson said the road will need more gravel next year, a cost of about $30,000. Anderson said the city did have some funds to maintain the road.

Council members said more discussion would be needed if the city were ever to move ahead on a road realignment that would direct traffic away from Skunk Hollow Road.

Anderson said Tuesday he wanted to get “the temperature of the council” on what to do about Skunk Hollow Road. The gravel portion of the road used to be Lyon County Road 67, but the county turned jurisdiction of the road over to the city of Marshall in 1996. In 2011 and 2012, the city talked about giving Skunk Hollow Road back to the county, but that didn’t happen.

Instead, the city planned to build a new road as an extension of Fairview Street. However, Anderson said, it’s now been 10 years with no construction. The paved road surface was ground into gravel in 2016.

Anderson said the city needed to make some kind of investment in Skunk Hollow Road. However, he said, reconstructing it might not be the best option. The road is in the Redwood River floodplain, he said.

“You start to question if it’s a good investment” to develop the area, he said. But at the same time, realigning the road would be expensive — anywhere from $720,000 to over $1 million.

Anderson said one possibility the city looked at would be extending Fairview Street north to divert traffic off of Skunk Hollow Road.

But that would just increase traffic on Fairview Street, which is residential, he said.

While city council members said there were good points about realigning traffic away from the current Skunk Hollow Road, they were less enthusiastic about the costs involved.

“We’re comfortable continuing to maintain the road,” Anderson said.