Dairy Pond curve gets warning posts
These reflective marker posts were installed last week by the city of Norris on a dangerous curve on Dairy Pond Road, a major cut-though route for traffic going to and from Norris Lake and the Anderson County Park. Residents have been asking the city to install some form of warning or barrier devices on the curve. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Dairy Pond is on a high-traffic route used by many people to cut through Norris on their way between Norris Lake points to the east and Andersonville Highway to the west.
The sharp curve has never had a guard rail or any type of warning device, but is considered particularly dangerous because the road has no shoulder at that point and there is a sharp drop-off into a field that has recently been cleared of most of its trees.
Residents say that dropping a car’s right-side wheels off the pavement while going around the curve would likely result in a rollover crash.
Norris City Manager Bailey Whited said Monday that the property owner where the clearing has been taking place has not filed any plans with the city for any type of development on the land, which consists of several acres of rolling landscape.
That portion of Norris is zoned “FAR” – Forest, Agriculture, Recreation – but single-family housing is allowed as well, although the minimum lot size is two acres, Whited said.
While some residents have asked the city to install a guard rail along the curve, Whited said the reflective marker posts will have to suffice for now.
“[They were] intended to bring attention to the curve, but not to serve like a guard rail,” he said. “In the immediacy, that is our solution. A guard rail comes with a much heftier price tag. This was a solution that could be made during the current budget year.”
Whited said the bright yellow marker posts – about four feet high, with orange reflectors facing traffic at the top of each – were the idea of Public Works Director Kerry Hevel.
Dairy Pond Road connects East Norris Road, just north of its intersection with Andersonville Highway, to Reservoir Road, which extends east out of the city and becomes Red Hill Road. Red Hill Road ends with its connection to Park Lane, the thoroughfare from Andersonville to Anderson County Park and the southern shore of Norris Lake on the Powell River branch.
Several Norris Lake marinas and lakeside communities are positioned along and off of Park Lane.
It’s shorter and quicker to use Red Hill/Reservoir/Dairy Pond/East Norris roads as a cut-through when heading to Interstate 75/Exit 122 or Clinton/Oak Ridge.
