Supervisors hear Salina Road concerns

Three residents addressed the Jefferson County supervisors this morning with complaints about driving conditions ? specifically loose rocks causing windshield chips and cracks ? on Salina Road, which was recently seal-coated.

It was not the first time residents have addressed this Salina Road issue with the board of supervisors in the past few weeks.

Supervisor Dick Reed asked Jefferson County Engineer Scott Cline to give an example of what he?d tell anyone who called and asked about what to do if loose rocks on Salina Road caused a windshield to crack and need replacement.

?I?d tell them to contact their own insurance company first,? said Cline. ?If their insurance company doesn?t cover it, I?d advise them to call LL Pelling Co. Asphalt Paving, the contractor. I can give people the phone number if they call me. I can forward their information and the contractor?s insurance company can file a claim. And the county has insurance and people can file a claim with Jefferson County. I don?t know who will pay.

?It?s kind of a gray area,? said Reed. ?But if it was me with a broken windshield, I?d want to jump up and down on the county.?

Supervisor Steve Burgmeier asked what has been done on Salina Road since complaints began.

Cline said they?ve put sand down, and he?d like to see what brooming would do to get loose rocks taken care of.

?With cooler weather, we can try brooming,? he said. ?In high temperatures, brooming might loosen more rocks.?

One of the residents in the audience, Richard Westhoff, asked whose idea it was to use the material used on Salina Road.

Reed asked who wrote the specifications for the road project.

?It?s in the specifications to use boiler slag,? said Cline. ?The specs weren?t very specific. Whoever wrote the specs may have had something in mind, but it was written too general. If a contractor is not directed, he can get the material from anywhere.?

Reed asked Cline to find out what other counties have used the same product as what is on Salina Road.

?I?d like to know who has used this and how long it took for roads to settle down,? said Reed.

Burgmeier noted the size of rocks in the boiler slag is ?perfect for catching on tires, which act like a sling shot.?

Cline said driving fast doesn?t help.

?Most incidents happen when meeting someone else on the road or following someone too closely,? said Cline. ?Or it could be the binder, too.?

Westhoff said if it?s a known problem, the county should at least put signs indicating loose gravel or to not drive fast.

?The county is responsible for whatever happens out there,? he said. ?And you know there?s a problem. The material has slid around and moved. The process must have been wrong. The county engineer should have monitored this project more closely.?

Bill Lyons said he?s lived in the country and driven Salina Road since 1984 and never had a broken windshield before.

?It has loose rock at the edges, the road is noisy to travel you can?t have a conversation with a passenger, and now I have a chipped windshield. Yes, I have insurance, but there?s also the deductible,? said Lyons.

?This road project sure hasn?t benefited the people who live out there.?

Greg Lowenberg said it was telling that the county engineer was afraid to run a brush over the road.

?It doesn?t seem a brush should tear up a seal-coated road,? he said. ?I?ve had two windshields broken and a third one hit. I?m not sure what needed fixing on the road to begin with; it seems rougher in places.

?And if other counties have used this material, wouldn?t the time to check about it have been before using it??

Reed said the county seal-coats roads quite a bit.

?We?ve gotten complaints after seal-coating some roads,? he said. ?People call up and say they?ve lived on a paved road all their lives and now the county came out and graveled it. We didn?t. It was seal-coated.

?We decided to go with boiler slag because it?s a dark material and doesn?t look like a gravel road. We used boiler slag on other roads we seal-coated, but this material is slightly different and we didn?t know it would be different until it was being done. The contractor told us it was the greatest thing,? said Reed. ?And we do have an engineer technician who goes out and checks roads as they are being done.?

Burgmeier pointed out the project to seal-coat Salina Road has been in the process for a year, so Cline, hired this summer, wasn?t part of most of the process.

Lyons said his family uses a dirt road to connect with Walton Road to not have to drive on Salina Road. He asked what the chances are of getting the dirt road graveled.

?To gravel, the road needs a 66-foot right-of-way,? said Burgmeier. ?That bit that was graveled on Walton Road was requested by the owner, and we didn?t pay for easement.?

Westhoff said the contractor knew the material would cause problems

?The thing that torques me, the flagger told me on the first day, ?only one cracked windshield so far.? Pelling knew what that stuff is like,? said Westhoff. ?It seems it would have been not so big a problem if the rocks had been mixed in with the binder.?

Cline said the process is to lay the binder, which helps seal the road against water seeping into the road bank, then rock it, then it?s rolled.

?Parts of Salina Road look good,? said Cline. ?Parts of the road where farm equipment leaves and enters from field entrances, and usually turning as they go, has loosened rocks.?

Reed said the engineer needs to find out how other counties using this product have dealt with it.

?We?re dealing with a new product, and we can?t answer your questions,? Reed said to the three residents in the audience.

Supervisor Lee Dimmitt was absent from this morning?s meeting.