Roads crew make discoveries underground

MT. PLEASANT — As Henry County Engineer Jake Hotchkiss met with the Board of Supervisors Thursday morning to give an update on permits, road maintenance, and construction in the county, he also revealed some discovery made by construction crews.

According to Hotchkiss, crews looked into the subgrade quality for the Lowell Hill construction project Thursday morning.

“We were out on the grading project this morning down there at Lowell and doing proof rolls for a part of it,” Hotchkiss said during the Board of Supervisor’s meeting Thursday morning. “We were determined if the sub grade is sufficient to hold the new pavement up, and overall, it's fine. There was a couple spot or one spot in particular that we had to pour out.”

According to Hotchkiss that spot is where the old road sat.

“ … underneath there was not great material,” he said. “So, we’re going to core out some material and then we’ll put in some better fill material in there.”

Hotchkiss assured the board that the state of poor soil is relatively normal.

“It's kind of like what we've ran into on Winfield Avenue,” he said. “We pulled that pavement up. You can imagine. You got brand-new, you got your pavement sitting on top, you got your rock shoulders and then any moisture that ever accumulates just sits underneath that and that's essentially what it is.”

“It looks like a green muck …” Hotchkiss described. “You put some other material in and ironically, 20 years from now it'll probably look the same green muck again.”

According to Hotchkiss, this generally comes from putting down a substantial amount of modified subbase and fabric that will help spread out the load of new pavement.

Crews are approximately halfway done with the grading for this project.

“Hopefully next week, they're going to try to get some sub drain in on there and then maybe start placing modified at the west end as they continue grading going north,” Hotchkiss said.

As work on the Ash Avenue project south of Hillsboro began, crews encountered an old box culvert.

“We’re having to deal with that, now,” Hotchkiss said. “We’ll probably refill that in. Pulling that out is not always a great situation because you have to put more fill material in there, get compaction and settlement, but it is interfering with our new culvert.”

“Those are some of the beautiful treasures that we sometimes find buried under the road,” he said during his update. “So, we're going to deal with that today, as well.”

The County Engineer’s office spoke with Windsteam this past week about needing to pull out lines they had installed incorrectly.

“We’ve had a good conversation with Windsteam and the prime contractor who's overseeing their stuff, so should be good going forward. We just had to make our stance that they installed it incorrectly.”

According to Hotchkiss, because Windstream did not follow their permit correctly, the cost to fix the problem belongs to Windstream and not the county.

During the week of May 30-June 2, blade operators worked on hauling rock to the Winfield area instead of blading during the current dry conditions.

“There are wash forms and some rough areas out there,” Hotchkiss acknowledged. “We have to wait until we get some moisture because fixing them, they just come right back.”

“We’ve had some calls about rough roads, and we know they’re out there, but it’s just too dry to do much,” he said.

While crews work on rock flume and slopes near Pickle Church and that section of road is closed, they’re also doing repair work.

Additional work for the week included replacing entrance pipes, including one North of Lowell in preparation for waste material from construction, spraying noxious weeds, and mowing on gravel roads.

Hotchkiss also presented the board with the contract to begin work on the Iowa Roadside Vegetation Management (IRVM) shed.

This shed will store the county’s seeding and erosion control equipment.

“We're putting up a small shed to handle our hydro, cedar drill, tractor, anything that we use with storage of that kind,” Hotchkiss explained.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com