Road over Big Sur landslide to cost $40 million

Big Sur landslide 2017

California officials say it will cost about $40 million to build a road over a massive Central Coast landslide that closed the scenic coastal highway leading to Big Sur.

The Department of Transportation said Friday that Highway 1 could reopen by late summer next year, but the timeline for rebuilding the road will depend on this winter's weather.

A quarter-mile of the picturesque highway was buried in May when more than 1 million tons of rock and earth slipped down a slope saturated by winter storms.

Caltrans says the replacement road will be realigned across the slide and buttressed with embankments, berms, rocks and other supports.

The Monterey Herald reports (http://bit.ly/2eWlDCZ) the area remains unstable and that in July Caltrans called the slide "ongoing and still active."