The Niles Highway Department's Beaver Pipe Cage culvert protector recently won awards from the Federal Highway Administration's Build a Better Mousetrap National Competition.
Pat Steger, superintendent for the Niles Highway Department, was stunned when he learned his department was honored in a nationally recognized competition for a homemade device meant to deal with a local beaver issue.
"It's like, 'You've got to be kidding me,'" he said with a laugh. "It's unbelievable."
The department recently scored big at the Federal Highway Administration's Build a Better Mousetrap National Competition, winning in the Innovative Project category and getting voted for Best Overall Innovation. The national competition focuses on creative solutions to problems that local and tribal transportation workers face, according to the administration's website.
The department's entry was a “Beaver Pipe Cage” culvert protector. It is a "reinforced, detachable barrier that prevents beavers from plugging culverts with debris while allowing for good water flow and easier culvert maintenance by the department," according to a press release from the Cornell Local Roads Program, a program from Cornell University that submits entries for the national competition.
The winning idea was born from an issue in Niles, Steger said Tuesday. A beaver kept plugging up a culvert that town employees would have clear out every couple of weeks. Steger said he came up with the idea, and the department, which includes three full-time employees besides himself, created it.
Initially, the culvert protector would collapse, so they reinforced it with old galvanized signposts. Now that it is reinforced and has been in place, Steger believes the beaver has moved on.
He believes this concept could be useful for other municipalities.
"It's a cheap thing, it's real simple to build, and as far as I'm concerned, it's going to work," Steger said.
The idea already is gaining outside attention.
"Yesterday I did get a call from somebody from South Carolina, already interested and asking me questions, so word's getting around," he said.
Adam Howell, communications specialist for the Cornell Local Roads Program, said the protector was the second-place winner for its local competition in which municipalities submitted ideas. The program submitted the Niles project and some other entries, each to a different category, in the national competition.
The idea of the federal contest, Howell said, is for municipalities across the country to draw inspiration from these concepts for their own areas. He said the Cornell program was impressed with the Niles department's efforts.
"We want to see things that (are) accessible to almost any department, and this is something that they developed that be could made in-house very cheaply, with oftentimes materials that highway departments naturally have lying around, almost, available to them,' he said. "It is very low-cost, easy to implement and it solves the problem in an incredibly effective manner."
Staff writer Kelly Rocheleau can be reached at (315) 282-2243 or kelly.rocheleau@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @KellyRocheleau.
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