Some county residents unhappy with chip-and-seal roads' performance

Robert Hahs spent 10 years convincing his neighbors to sign easements for road improvements.

He passed along the promise he'd heard from Cape Girardeau County officials that asphalt would be poured on county roads 422 and 425 once the easements were signed. Instead, those roads in Friedheim were covered with chip-and-seal paving -- layers of gravel and oil that harden over the surface of the road.

The paving appears to be falling apart, and the county's newest commissioner is asking to rethink chip and seal.

Potholes dot the roads, and, on one section as long as a football field, county road crews had to remove the chip and seal completely from half of the road to repair the soft roadbed below. The work was completed in November, too late for any new oil-based pavement to be applied. Chip-and-seal paving costs half of what asphalt does. County officials used the less-expensive method on a handful of roads around the county as an experiment. Other roads were paved with asphalt. The county paid $788,124 to Mount Vernon, Mo.-based Blevins Asphalt Construction Co. Inc. to pave nine county roads, 11 miles in all.

"It's 100 percent better than gravel, but asphalt is 100 percent better than chip and seal," Hahs said Thursday. Within a day of the paving done July 3, he said, he saw spots that were weak or not properly paved, such as at the corner of County Road 422 and Route A.

ELIZABETH DODD ~ edodd@semissourian.comRobert Hahs of North Cape Girardeau County walks down County Road 422 on his property where a part of the road was broken up six months after an experimental chip and seal paving of the road.

"We're very disappointed in the quality. First of all, we were supposed to get blacktop," said Liz Abernathy, who lives on County Road 422. "Then somebody switched it to chip and seal. ... It's better than gravel, but we're worried about what it's going to be like in a year."

Hahs and Abernathy said what upset residents most was seeing asphalt applied on nearby County Road 419, the same day their roads were getting chip-and-seal paving. County Road 422 is one of the first to get easements from all property owners.

First District Commissioner Paul Koeper this week asked county officials to consider suspending the experimental chip-and-seal paving for at least one year to see how the roads hold up through the freeze-thaw cycles of winter and spring. He has been inspecting roads as he has time -- it was how he spent Sunday -- and expects to examine county roads 425 and 422 soon. The last time he drove over them, as a private citizen, what he saw "wasn't pretty," he said.

On Monday, Koeper, Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones and 2nd District Commissioner Jay Purcell asked highway administrator Scott Bechtold to call Blevins and find out what, if anything, can be done.

Scott Crabtree, the project estimator for Blevins who worked on the Cape Girardeau County paving, said Thursday he had not heard from anyone about the problem.

"If we had known about the problem while we were there, we would have fixed it while we were there," he said.

Crabtree said he would call Bechtold this week and get more information, as well as research whether the county had any warranty on the work.

Crabtree said Blevins has been operated by the same family for more than 60 years and "would not walk away" from a customer's complaint if the company was responsible for the problem.

"Chip and seal can be delicate," he said, explaining that soft soil below the road beds can cause problems, as can the roadbed preparation and the quality of chipped rock used in the layers of the hard surface.

He said the company performed compaction tests on the roads to make sure they were ready to be paved and that all the tests were good. He said results were delivered to the county.

Koeper and the county's road and bridge advisory board will meet at 7 p.m. Monday in the county administration building, 1 Barton Square, Jackson. The meeting is open to the public.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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Chip-and-seal woes

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