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The massive Highway 20 realignment project near Eddyville is in the home stretch.

One more summer of blasting will be required to displace 350,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock from a sharp curve at the spot where the new alignment joins the current road. Then, it will be a matter of final grading and roadway base construction, paving the 5.5-mile section, adding guardrails and signs and some final habitat loose ends.

And a project that had an original completion date of December 2009 and a budget of $153 million will be ready to open, seven years late and more than $200 million over budget.

Oregon Department of Transportation officials say the road will open late this year and a curvy, dangerous 10 miles of two-lane road will be replaced by a straight shot through the hills to the south on an intricately engineered roadway with passing lanes and wide shoulders.

“Everything is going according to plan,” ODOT project leader Jerry Wolcott said.

The project team has moved 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt and rock in the past two summers and came through a December that featured a deluge of 27 inches of rain. And the hillsides in the Coast Range about 20 road miles from Newport held.