ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Seward County constituents got to hear about some of what is going on with the government entity and to get answers to any questions they may have had at a recent town hall meeting hosted by the county commission.
Local residents also got to meet the county’s newest Road and Bridge director, Mark Johnson, and they got updates on road projects from Johnson and former interim Director Brock Theiner.
Two of the bigger road projects the county has happening are on Road O and Road P in eastern Seward County. Johnson said Road O was a complete rebuild, and plans call for the same for Road P.
Theiner said the build on Road O was four miles and included raising the road 34 inches.
“It was raised with levels of compacted caliche with Oklahoma road gravel on it,” he said. “This spring, we will be applying Perma-Zyme, which hopefully makes the top of the road where we only have to blade it a couple of times a year, and it’ll withstand the truck traffic that’s we have between Conestoga and Heifer Source.”
Theiner said building a road from scratch was a new experience for the Road and Bridge department.
“It took us three months to get it done with the weather,” he said. “So far, since its completion, we’ve only bladed it twice. It’s going to be a really stout road, and we’re going to try some different things.”
With Road P, Theiner said there is not quite as much work to be done, but he did say with Road O, ditch work had to be done in addition to raising the road.
“There were places on Road O where the road was actually lower than the ditches,” he said. “We had a lot of ditch work to do that would hold water. There are some places where there’s nowhere for the water to run. Hopefully, we can take care of the heavy silage truck traffic on P and O by building these up.”
Theiner said the preliminary cost budgeted for the four miles of Road O was $500,000, and but the final cost came in at around $450,000 to $475,000.
“We hauled quite a bit of material, and your Road and Bridge department did all of it,” he said.
Theiner described the planned process for applying Perma-Zyme, a soil stabilizer, to Road O.
“You blade off six inches up to your crown,” he said. “You apply it with a water truck, lay your six inches back over, do the same thing on the other side, lay it back over, and you apply it with the water truck on the surface. It has to sit untraveled for 72 hours above 40 degrees.”
After Perma-Zyme is applied, Theiner said truck traffic on Road O will need to be shut down for a time.
“We’re planning on trying to wait until after school gets out,” he said. “That way, we don’t have to interrupt the buses. But they’re saying with the road samples we sent, we may only have to blade that thing once a year once we put this Perma-Zyme down. The chemical just for Road O was $52,000 and change.”
With Road P, Theiner said many constituents likely do not know about the 30-foot width the road has in some places, and a 27-foot road top is ideal.
“We’ll be pulling a lot of that back in, crowning it and getting it built up,” he said. “The sand on Road P has been sent in as a sample, and it will work with the Perma-Zyme also. We’re going to be trying some different things. We may even look at a newer product to try on P and see which one works better. We’re not quite sure yet.”
Theiner reminded constituents of the county’s plans for 28 miles worth of road overlay for this year.
“We’ve been looking at some erosions on the side of the roads and around culverts,” he said. “We’re going to try to implement a bunch of the millings where we’re having the erosion problems. We’re not getting a lot of rain, and the grass isn’t growing. When it does rain, we’re having it wash off right at the edge of the blacktops.”
Theiner said Road and Bridge is likewise looking at possibly integrating some millings into some low-lying areas that get and retain mud.
“We’re going to see how it works on implementing some of that into some of our road bases, see how it works,” he said.
Commission Chairman Scott Carr reviewed the work included with the 28 miles of overlay for this year.
“Our overlay project’s going to consist of Road R from U.S.-54 to U.S.-160,” he said. “We’ll have Meade Lake Road, which goes from U.S.-54 to the Meade County line. That one’s actually going to be a three-inch mill and a three-inch overlay instead of the two inches. That’s the one that has a Cost Share. The state picks up $1 million, and we pay $750,000. Then we’ll have Road V from Meade Lake Road to U.S.-54, Road 16 from T Road to Kismet Main Street, Kismet Main Street to U.S.-54 to Road 16, Road J to Road I, then Larabee Road from the Oklahoma state line to U.S.-160.”
As for Johnson, he said what he has seen thus far is many roads and culverts in bad shape.
“I’ve been driving through the county looking at them,” he said. “I’m trying to get a plan together on trying to get some culverts fixed while still staying on top of the roads. We’ve got spring coming. If we get rain, then there’sthe mowing. I just got two new guys hired who are going to start next week. That’s going to help us out big time.”
Later, Theiner talked about the new Star software program the Road and Bridge department recently implemented.
“It will inventory our road materials, our signs, our culverts,” he said. “Not only does it do that, but they were able to get with GIS and get a detailed map of Seward County to download into this new software.”
Theiner said Road and Bridge operators are currently working identifying culverts, namely their locations to get them put into the county’s GPS system.
“We’ll be able to put all that data in the culver part, the culvert layer of this software, where Mark will be able to pull it up on Seward County’s map, and it’ll show exactly where culvert is,” he said. “He will be able to tailor a maintenance program from that as to what culvers are going to get done that year and what ones need replaced.”
Theiner said a sign layer will also be added to the Star program.
“All the signs in Seward County will eventually get put into the system along with pictures,” he said. “When a constituent calls in that a sign’s down, Mark can just pull that up, and it’ll show him of picture of the exact sign or the post. It’ll save time. We’ll be able to send that stuff right out of the shop. He’ll have an inventory list of what signs and posts he has and whatever he’s going to need in the shop. It’s going to really streamline.”
Theiner said the Star program is currently being used to track some of the costs of the Road O project.
“We’re hoping with the new added layers and usage of it, we can get our cost right down to the penny, being able to track not only our guys’ hours but our equipment hours and fuel and gravel usage,” he said. “We’re excited to be able to have all that at our fingertips.”
With current commission’s vision for Road and Bridge and with a new director, Theiner said the hope is to get a plan for every year with a budget of $200,000 earmarked for crack and chip sealing.
“We’re going to add this much caliche or gravel to this road, and we’re going to try to get this into a cycle and get it to where we can maintain our infrastructure better,” he said. “It’s going to take a little time. We’re starting behind the eight ball, but we can get this Star program going, he learns the county more, and we get a fully functioning model of everything in Seward County we have to maintain and take care of plus equipment, buying new blades.”
Theiner said Road and Bridge officials are looking at the costs of chip and crack sealing to see if it would be more ideal to hire an outside company to do the work or to get the equipment and do some of the project themselves.
“We’re not going to buy the equipment to do chip sealing,” he said. “We’ll have to hire that out, and that’s coming in about $20,000 a mile. For the crack sealing, it’s about $10,000 a mile right now.”
At this time, Theiner said the primary concern for crack sealing is Second Street Road.
“It was overlayed about seven years ago, and the cracks are not that about,” he said. “It’s about $10,000 a mile, and you go to Bluebell Road and the cracks are big there. It’s going to take twice the material crack seal it. We’re getting prices. We’re looking at compiling a bunch of information and try to put a plan together.”
Commissioner Tammy Sutherland-Abbott said when the county hired its road consultant, Kirkham Michael & Associates, officials with that company examined the county’s entire road system and prioritized road needs.
“Then we tried to develop and become proactive in implementing a plan where we have all the road repairs on the schedule,” she said.
Theiner too talked about the difficulty of maintaining the county’s roads, particularly with a lack of precipitation.
“We just end up with powder, and we move powder around,” he said. “It’s really difficult. I don’t think we’ve ever had a year this bad with the wind that stayed over 60 miles an hour. It make it real challenging.”
Theiner said a few millings are mixed with some of the county’s sandier roads.
“We’re concerned on that stuff balling back up and when we blade it coming back up in chunks,” he said. “We’re going to try some different things. We can disc it into the sandy roads, and we’re going to be experimenting, trying different things. We’ve talked with the engineer. We’ve got some places that have washed on some of our blacktops and washed up under the blacktop.”
In addition to Perma-Zyme, Theiner said other foams could be used to help raise road foundations in the county.
“We may experiment with a little bit of those to get that road bed solid back up and keep the water from going under it,” he said.
