The Utah Department of Transportation recently engaged in a 17-hour effort to create 1,600-feet worth of floodwater barriers from re-purposed concrete highway dividers near the towns of Elk Ridge and Woodland Hills.

Wildfires in those two areas this summer made the topography more susceptible to flooding, which is why the municipalities called on the Utah DOT for help, said Shane Marshall, the agency’s deputy director.

“These guys doing the work out here are from this area; these are their neighbors,” he said. “They want to help as much as they possibly can. These are used barriers we did not have any real use for – so we brought them over here and got to put them to good use.”

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