A. Upon application of the board of directors of any soil and water conservation district and of the board of supervisors of the county wherein the highway is located, the Department is authorized to permit the intermittent closing of any highway located within the boundaries of such district and county whenever in its judgment it is necessary to do so and when the highway will be intermittently subject to inundation by floodwaters retained by an approved watershed retention structure. All costs associated with such closing shall be borne by the board of supervisors of the county, including the costs of furnishing, erecting, and removing the necessary signs, barricades, signals, and lights to safeguard and direct traffic.
B. Before any permit may be issued for the temporary inundation and closing of such a highway, an application for such permit shall be made to the Department by the board of directors of the soil and water conservation district and the board of supervisors of the county wherein the highway is located. The application shall specify the highway involved and shall request that a permit be granted to the county to allow the intermittent closing of the highway.
C. Before making such application, the board of supervisors of the county wherein such highway is located shall give notice of the proposed action by publication once each week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, and such notice shall contain a description of the places of beginning and the places of ending of such intermittent closing. In addition to such publication, the board of supervisors of such county shall give notice to all public utilities having facilities located within the rights-of-way of any highway being closed by mailing a copy of such notice to the office of each such public utility located within the county, or if no office is located within the county, then to the office of such utility located nearest to the county. Furthermore, no such application shall be accepted by the Department that does not certify compliance by the applicants with the requirements of publication and notice in the manner prescribed in this section. All costs associated with the application procedure and notice to the public and to public utilities shall be borne by the board of supervisors of the county.
D. Not sooner than 30 days after the last publication and not sooner than 30 days after the mailing of such notice, the Department may issue the permit with respect to such highway. Nothing herein contained shall require the Department to issue such a permit when the Department, in its sole discretion, does not consider such intermittent closing of highways to be in the best interest of fulfilling the Department’s duties to the traveling public.