POULSBO — Melinda Weer had a bit of trouble leaving home one day in November 2012, despite being up on time and ready to take her kid to school.

“When I went down at 9 a.m. there was a 20-foot-across, 5- to 6-feet deep hole in front of my driveway,” she said.

A neighboring tree had fallen down during recent rainfall and cracked a culvert through which Bjorgen Creek flowed. The culvert ran under the long driveway leading up a hill to Weer’s house. The rushing water broke through the culvert, eating away behind its walls, tearing down cinder blocks that were part of its construction. In a flash, a giant gash was ripped across the Weers’ driveway. Utilities, including an exposed electrical line, were left hanging, crossing the gap.

“All our utilities come through the driveway,” Weer said. “The power to this house was put in back in the ’70s and they didn’t use insulation at that time, it was exposed, uninsulated and carrying 7,200 volts. We also had our main water line hanging in the air. “The strength of that water pushed cinder blocks 100 feet down stream.”

The driveway was the only connection between the house and Noll Road. The Weers were cut off.

For nearly two years, ideas on how to fix the culvert bounced around from the Weers to the city to the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Eventually, the Bjorgen Creek culvert fit in well with a larger plan for the developing northeast side of Poulsbo, as Noll Road prepares for considerable changes in the coming years.

First, the Weers gave the front acre of their land to the city, the portion with the washed out culvert. Then, a developer was required to fix the culvert in relation to its plans in the area. Just up Noll Road, Quadrant Homes is in the process of turning a large expanse of land into 145 new homes. To accommodate that, a new underground sewer line will be installed. It will run down Noll Road, near the Bjorgen Creek culvert, and eventually connect to another line near Highway 305.

“In order to complete the sewer, they had to complete the bridge,” Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson said. “It’s an enormous culvert.”

Construction of the new culvert began on Aug. 25. It is now mostly completed, with Bjorgen Creek flowing through. What was once small culvert is now a 14-foot diameter, 60-foot long tunnel with concrete siding. The Weers’ driveway runs on top.

The wide pathway will provide fish, including salmon, an easier pathway through. Another culvert near Highway 305 was recently widened. The city plans to fix and widen another culvert on Bjorgen Creek on the other side of the Weers’ property. It’s a priority as the new large culvert is upstream from a smaller one.

“We just have to replace the one off Storhoff (Road) and then we can have fish almost up to Deer Run,” Erickson said. “We are going to move that forward as quickly as we can because now we have a gigantic culvert feeding into a tiny culvert.”

Poulsbo’s Public Works Department has been directed to make sure the “tiny culvert” is free and clear for the upcoming rainy season.

A byproduct of the project will add a new park to the area as part of the 1-acre deal with the city.

“It’s actually going to be a stormwater retention facility,” Erickson said. “It will be like a park, it will be flat, and it will be a recreated wetland and it will be heavily landscaped.”

She added, “For all intents and purposes, it will look like a park. It will do some of the stormwater retention that is necessary as we rebuild Noll Road.”

Over the next few years, the city aims to redirect Noll Road to accommodate the expanding neighborhood. Yet another piece of the plan.

Erickson, who is a neighbor in the area, even signed over a portion of her own land to benefit Noll Road.

“We signed a license with the city of Poulsbo to create a trail that will go around the perimeter of my property,” she said. “One of the things that worried me ever since I moved there is that there’s no walking pathways around those really hard corners.”

“It will be a gravel trail,” Erickson said. “There’s no sidewalks and there’s a lot of kids that walk up that road.”

Erickson said that it will ultimately provide a greater flow of traffic as Poulsbo grows.

“It’s all about the Noll Road corridor,” Erickson said. “There’s a whole bunch of houses that are going to be built on that road in the next 10 years.

“The whole world is getting kind of ripped up there,” she said. “It’s pretty noisy at my house these days.”