Roads department makes promotion and progress

MT. PLEASANT — Henry County Engineering and Roads Department keep focused while in the weeds on road construction season.

Effective July 1, Cole Kellogg will begin his promoted position of Maintenance Superintendent Assistant.

“Cole's worked with us for not quite 10 years,” County Engineer Jake Hotchkiss said. “He is Extremely talented in our telescope and ditching. Really, what's made him stand out is just his construction knowledge.”

Hotchkiss stated that this construction knowledge will lend itself well to the desire for this position to provide help in organizing construction maintenance forces when working on projects.

As far as current construction maintenance projects are concerned, crews continue to keep pace and make progress.

According to Hotchkiss, the work on X23 North of Lowell reached a stopping point this last week after only five days.

While Hotchkiss said the department originally anticipated this portion of the project to take 10 days, he stated, “We worked for five days out there and got to a quitting point.”

“If you had a chance to drive it, you can definitely see we widened the shoulders and we flattened the slopes out there. So it gives a little different look,” Hotchkiss said of the work done to widen the shoulders.

He anticipates beginning work on the next section of that project again next week.

Hotchkiss stated that he anticipates crews will begin shoulder pull work the week of July 10 at 170th Street working south.

According to Hotchkiss, “Shoulder pulling is basically where we reconstruct the road top.”

This work will include reestablishing materials on the sides of the roads and reshaping the road to its proper width.

“We’re going to be putting new rock down and stabilizing that with a product called Base One,” Hotchkiss further explained. “It’s a pretty extensive project, so, this is probably going to be at least a two-month project or longer.”

Hotchkiss plans to focus on the first three miles of roadway before committed to the following two.

“We have to be mindful of harvest at this point,” he said.

The current construction project on Lowell Hill continues to make progress, though, the Ashe Avenue project recently ran into a hiccup.

“Lowell Hill construction work continues south of the bridge,” Hotchkiss shared. “The contractor spent the time last week to grade and haul waste material for approximately another 800 feet of waste material was placed on the hill going north out of Lowell, and we actually got that section filled.”

“Ash Avenue, their excavator broke down last week, and so they're bringing a new one in this week and are going to continue working on backfilling,” Hotchkiss updated. “So a little bit slower right now with that loss of that equipment being down.”

While Hotchkiss stated that crews could make up some of that time, he still anticipates the project will take at least three more weeks.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com