The Post Falls office of Bismarck, N.D.-based Knife River Corp. has submitted the apparent low bid, at $4.2 million, for an Idaho Department of Transportation project to repave a stretch of Interstate 90 between Pinehurst and Elizabeth Park Road, east of Kellogg.

The work is scheduled to begin in July 2011. It will involve grinding down two inches of asphalt on the travel lanes, median, shoulders, and on- and off-ramps on an about 7.5 mile stretch of the freeway and replacing it with 49,500 tons of new and recycled asphalt, says Vanner Hegbloom, a project manager for Knife River. The project also will replace 35,200 feet of guardrail along the route.

One lane of traffic will remain open in each direction throughout the construction period, which is expected to last about 45 working days, Hegbloom says. The project time frame allows for the work to be done during daylight hours only, he says. That stretch of I-90 was last paved in 1997, Hegbloom says.

The project will be paid for with 90 percent federal funds and 10 percent state funds. Barbara Babic, a spokeswoman for the Idaho Department of Transportation, says Idaho is a donee state, meaning it receives more transportation improvement dollars from the federal gas tax distribution than it puts into the account. "Just about all of the highway projects in Idaho are done with federal aid dollars," Babic says.