Jefferson County Engineer: ‘We’re sorry’ for sticky asphalt mix on Pleasant Plain Road

FAIRFIELD – Jefferson County Engineer’s Office is offering to clean cars whose undersides were caked in an asphalt mixture the county applied on Pleasant Plain Road north of Fairfield.

Jefferson County Engineer DeWayne Heintz said his office will begin taking appointments Tuesday, June 17 for the public to use its hot steam cleaner at the engineer’s office/road department at 901 N. Eighth St. Residents are asked to call 641-472-6528 to schedule an appointment, which takes about 45 minutes per vehicle.

Heintz told The Union Monday his office had been trying to find the correct mixture of oil and sand for the final coat on the county’s big resurfacing project this summer where it’s chipping and sealing 16 miles of Farm to Market Roads. During previous chip and seal projects in the county, loose rock that was left behind on the road’s surface led to broken windshields, so Heintz experimented with a new mixture, using a lighter coat of oil with sand over top to keep vehicles from tracking the oil.

Pleasant Plain Road was worked on Thursday and Friday, June 12-13, and again Monday, June 16. Heintz said it was the third road the county worked on during this project, after 218th and 110th streets.

“We weren’t completely happy with 218th, so we increased the sand, and probably shouldn’t have,” Heintz said. “And now unfortunately, I’ll be a car wash tomorrow.”

Rain visited the area on Friday, and turned the freshly poured mixture on Pleasant Plain into a “hell of a mess,” Heintz said.

“The rain we got Friday floated the oil into the sand, so we ended up with globs of sand laden with oil,” he said. “That gets thrown by the tires, and most of it hits wheel wells. I’ve been driving my personal vehicle on these roads day and night, and it hadn’t been an issue until Friday.”

Heintz said the mixture isn’t harmful to vehicles but it is unsightly and hard to scrub off, which is why it needs to be removed with really hot water or steam like the kind the secondary roads department uses.

Heintz said this past week has not been a “banner day for the county,” and apologized to the residents whose vehicles were affected by the sticky asphalt mixture.

“We’re very sorry, and I’m very sorry, and we’ll do what we can to make it right,” he said. “This is not something we had done before, and probably we’ll never do it again.”

In a follow-up message, Heintz asked residents not to follow the black tire paths but to run their tires where the chips are to minimize the spraying of material onto their vehicles.

The list of roads the county is working on this summer as part of its 16 miles of new chip and seal are:

  Buy Photo

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com