SEBASTIAN – There’s just not enough room for a foot-tall berm for landscaping along the planned extension of Powerline Road, engineers told the Sebastian City Council this week.
Instead, a hedge-like row of vegetation will be planted along the west side of the road, visually separating the road from the adjacent homeowners.
“We found some trouble designing that,” Steve Moller said of the requested berm that would have raised the vegetative wall a foot.
The council, after trying to squeeze the berm in along the road, voted 4-1 to move forward with the $1.5 million extension without the berm.
Councilman Eugene Wolff opposed moving forward without the berm – not because of the berm, per se, but due to his underlying objection to the project as a whole.
The road would connect Main Street to County Road 512/Sebastian Boulevard near Sebastian Elementary.
Wolff has expressed opposition to the road extension at this time, saying at previous meetings that he does not believe the project is yet needed.
Councilman Richard Gillmor pushed the engineer, Masteller & Moller, to find a way to make the berm happen.
“This is what the folks wanted,” he said, “and what we wanted. It’s your job to make it happen.”
Moller told the council that to move the berm to where it could fit would make for an unsafe maintenance area for the ditch. The top of the ditch is eight feet across, enough room for a maintenance vehicle or a berm – but not both.
Mayor Jim Hill said that the council was working hard to mitigate the impact of the road by providing the landscaping, adding that landscaping appeared to be the best the city could do.
