A sticky situation: Paving fails to bond to two roads
Staff writer
Problems with Remington Rd. are causing no shortage of headaches for drivers, county authorities, and road and bridge employees.
A blade patch recently applied to the road from US-56 to Pilsen is not sticking to a micro surface applied about a year ago.
What the patching material is sticking to is tires of cars that drive over it. The road has become uneven and dangerous for anyone driving too fast.
Patching material also has blackened US-56 and K-256, where drivers continue from the north.
“It’s horrible,” bus driver and property owner Dina Vogel said. “The question I have is — they did the same thing on the Goessel Rd. Why did they keep doing it? Why are they wasting money?”
Vogel said the road was “rough as hell” — so rough, it was dangerous.
“There’s probably going to be a wreck on it. People speed on it, and there’s going to be an accident. I told my son, who is 16, not to take it.
“We have to take it. We have a couple farms on that road, so we have to use it.”
Vogel suspects county employees who patched the road didn’t have the proper skills.
“We have some good road graders, but that takes a special skill to do that,” she said.
She doesn’t understand why blade operators didn’t stop when they realized the new surface wasn’t sticking.
“If it wasn’t bonding the first half mile, why did they keep doing it?” Vogel asked. “If stuff is not working, why don’t they stop and figure out why it’s not working?”
She fears the road will need to be taken back to rock, which she would hate to see because it is much used.
Commissioner Clarke Dirks said Remington Rd. and 120th Rd. from Indigo Rd. to K-15 were micro-surfaced and blade patched about the same time.
“This is the first time they’ve tried to blade patch over the micro-surfacing,” Dirks said. “As far as I know, they are working with the manufacturers and trying to figure out what’s going on and what the fix is.”
He asked for patience and for people to use the road only when needed.
“Tell people to take it easy on Remington until we get it fixed,” Dirks said. “It’s something that happened that we had no idea was going to happen. All we can do is fix it. But we’re not going to go out there and do it until we know we can do it right.”
Commission chairman Jonah Gehring said that many of the county’s roads had been micro-sealed, but that this was the first time the county had blade patched over it.
“It’s pretty bad. It’s rough and not sticking right,” he said. “It’s definitely something that we need to get figured out.”
County administrator Tina Spencer confirmed that “a contractor had been hired to perform micro-surfacing a year ago.
“This is a pavement preservation method that utilizes a polymer-modified paving system applied with specialized equipment,” she said. “It is a cold-application paving system that is promoted as a high performing, lower-cost preventative maintenance method.”
She conceded that the process hasn’t worked the way the county hoped.
“When the county crew went out to perform blade patching last week, our normal products (an oil and cold mix) would not adhere properly to the micro surface material,” she said.
The county is consulting experts to find a solution.
It is not yet known whether the solution will mean taking the road down to its previous surface for a complete re-do.
Until a solution is found, Remington will remain as it is.
“Crews have been temporarily pulled off this project until we know the correct products to use,” Spencer said. “We will continue work on other scheduled roads now and return to Remington later in the season to complete the scheduled maintenance.”
In the meantime, she said, road and bridges workers will smooth out the road and blade-patch troublesome areas.