A portion of Yellowwood Road in Brown County will remain closed for the next three months as a controversial $4.5 million road project moves forward.
The Indiana Department of Transportation is building a 300-foot bridge over Salt Creek and realigning the road. INDOT says the work will help address erosion issues and provide more people access to the Yellowwood Forest.
Residents stopped the project decades ago because of environmental concerns.
Linda Baden lives on Yellowwood Road and has to drive through several creeks to get to her house. She's worried the project won't address problems with the creeks that cross the road.
"The creek will find the road and then they'll have the same erosion problem with the new road," she says.
Baden's husband Charles Cole says he's come to terms with the project moving forward. But he wishes INDOT would have selected a different design for the bridge.
"The project will be finished, it will be OK," Cole says. "But it won't be in scale with what's around here."
Yellowwood Road is closed between State Road 46 and Yellowwood Lake Road for at least the next 100 days.
The second phase of the project will start in July.