State Department of Transportation workers on Wednesday will continue to break up and remove a rock slab from the side of Route 8 south between exits 20 and 22.
They spent several hours Tuesday cleaning up the rock, according to DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick. He described it as “routine maintenance” on a 30-foot by 7‑foot rock slab that had fallen off a cliff next to the highway into a “buffer zone” about a month ago.
Nursick said the rock did not go onto the highway.
“The buffer is there for a reason, so if anything comes off these rock walls it falls into the fall zone,” Nursick said. “We were using heavy equipment to break up this stone so we can use more heavy equipment to break it up and take it out of there.”
The fallen rocks are removed because mowers are used in those buffer areas, he said.
“Eventually pieces will break off. The elements act on them and pieces break off,” Nursick said.
Valley Indy readers driving along the road reported the incident on the Valley Indy Facebook page Tuesday.
Tuesday DOT workers closed one lane of the highway to complete the work. Nursick said they don’t expect to close any lanes for the work on Wednesday.
