JUNEAU — Lights, camera, reconstruction?

That sequence played out last spring when traffic from Highway 60 in the city of Columbus was detoured to Highway T for the filming of Public Enemies. Filming took place in downtown Columbus, which was retrofitted to look as it might have in the 1930s, when gangster John Dillinger engaged in a crime spree. Local filming involved actor Johnny Depp, and crews were busy for weeks preparing for the shoot.

The increased traffic on Highway T, however, caused $116,392 in damages, which nobody has volunteered to pay.

Dodge County Highway Commissioner Brian Field said officials from Columbus and the Department of Transportation approached the Highway Department in March and asked if they could use Highway T to redirect traffic from Highway 60 north to Highway S because they wanted to close Highway 60 in Columbus for the filming of Public Enemies.

"The DOT said they've used this as a detour in the past and it has worked out reasonably well, so we agreed to that," Field said. "About the same time this detour is running state traffic up Highway T, the frost starts coming out of the ground — this was in March. Consequently, frost coming out of the ground is the worst possible condition for your roadway, and all this extreme load from the state highway took its toll on Highway T, and it started to fail in given places."

Field said he called the DOT and said "this isn't working," and within days the detour was switched to Highway 26 to Highway A to Highway S.

But the damage to Highway T had been done.

 "We had a couple meetings with the DOT and city of Columbus to talk the whole thing over, and nobody seems to be volunteering to take the responsibility. So we agreed that Dodge County would make the road repairs because they needed to be done, and we'd continue to talk about who was going to be responsible for the cost of those repairs," Field said.

Those repairs included overlay work, shouldering and striping, which totaled $116,392. Field said he submitted the cost information to Columbus and DOT, but so far nobody has replied.

"The detour was permitted through a DOT state highway permitting process. There are some boundaries there, but I don't want to say who is going to be responsible, because I don't' know," Field said.

According to a municipal detour application posted on the DOT Web site, "The municipality shall accept full responsibility for any damage to local roads and streets resulting from closure and detour."

Columbus Department of Public Works director Dan Jensen did not return a phone call from the Daily Citizen Tuesday afternoon.