Published: July 18, 2008 12:11 am         

Lower-cost road paving drawing mixed reviews

TERRE HAUTE — Faced with less maintenance funding, Vigo County’s highway department is turning to a new and less-expensive method to maintain roads throughout county subdivisions.

It’s a method that brought some mixed reactions Thursday from residents of Deerfield subdivision, which had the most recent application of a slurry seal/microsurfacing, which places a mixture of emulsion and crushed stone on a road’s surface.

The cost for asphalt, put down about 11⁄2 inches thick, is about $60,000 per mile, while the cost of the microsurfacing is about $13,000 per mile, applied at about 3/8th of an inch, said Jerry Lindsay, county highway superintendent.

“This is a sealing process to preserve the roads. Asphalt will last longer and we know that, but we don’t have the money for asphalt. We’ve got to preserve what we got with preventative maintenance. We do the best we can with what we can afford,” Lindsay said.

“This is a process that allows us to get in there and preserve these [subdivision] roads. Just like for a driveway, people can’t afford to resurface a driveway every time it cracks, so they re-seal it,” Lindsay said.

Highway department officials last year looked at the microsurfacing process being used near Lafayette, where the surface has lasted seven years in some subdivisions, Lindsay said.

“Here, people would not get anything else because we can’t chip and seal in subdivisions, which would put rock way up in yards. We just don’t have the money to get into all these subdivisions to resurface them all” with asphalt, he said.

Pavement Solutions Inc. of Middletown is applying the surface under a contract with the Highway Department. The road application was first done in Shavell subdivision, then Miller subdivision, then Shrine Hill before Deerfield.

Joyce Trotzke, who lives on Canter Street in Deerfield, said the treated subdivision roads “don’t look even. There’s certainly not much of the material put down and I don’t know the purpose. I don’t hate it, but just don’t know why it had to be done.”

“Right now, I’d say eeeew,” said Deerfield resident Nancy Myers, shrugging her shoulders. “I would put a wait-and-see attitude on this. I think I will give it some time to see how it works out. I guess anything that saves money is something that has to be looked at, especially right now,” she said.

Nina Loudermilk, who lives on Fawn Street, said she thinks “it looks nicer than it did, that’s for sure. It was looking pretty shabby. It smells since it was put down, but there’s just some things you have to put up with. I don’t know why anybody would not be glad they did it.”

Jill and Steve Lankford, who for the past seven years have lived on Fawn Street in the subdivision, said they think other roads that had been hit by floods should be repaired first.

“This road was fine,” Jill Lankford said. “I think the road was better before this was done. It’s not very attractive and it stinks.

“This stuff they put down here is terrible, it is so coarse,” Steve Lankford said, just before he began to walk with his dogs in the neighborhood. “It is all right for a county road, but inside of a subdivision where there are kids playing, it is too rough. Plus, there are some big rocks in parts of the road. They could have spent their money somewhere else.”

Lindsay said road material costs have increased 25 percent and are likely to increase much more. He said about $400,000 from the county’s Economic Development Income Tax fund targeted for some county roads has been diverted to the new Canal Road project.

He said the county has applied for help from FEMA to rebuild county roads damaged in June floods, but said the county “would have to come up with $1 million if we have to make a 25 percent match.”

“My job is to recommend to [county] commissioners what we can do with less money. If someone gets mad about [the use of the microsurfacing], get mad at me. I have recommended it,” Lindsay said.

Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.