Nearly a year after the rampaging Pigeon River washed away parts of Interstate 40, the state and its contractor are poised to begin mining the tons of rock needed to rebuild the highway.
The rock will come from a quarry in Pisgah National Forest and be trucked across the river on a pair of temporary bridges to a new causeway along the base of the cliff below the highway.
Completed this summer, the causeway will allow the contractor, Ames Construction of Minnesota, to build retaining walls as tall as 70 feet to support the highway and protect it from future floods…