County resumes maintenance on gravel roads next week
Yuma County is set to resume regular maintenance of about 200 miles of gravel road within the county next week, with the goal of grading every single mile within the first two months so officials can get a feel for how much work lies ahead.
“Some of these roads haven’t had any eyes on them for quite some time, so we’ll get a better idea just what kind of shape they’re in and what kind of attention they’ll need,” said Public Works Director Joshua Scott on Wednesday.
Earlier this year, county officials put together a plan to bring regular maintenance back to gravel roads, which are vulnerable to becoming rutted and strewn with larger rocks over time, making them difficult to navigate, especially for those who don’t have 4-wheel drive vehicles.
The county Board of Supervisors asked for a renewed emphasis on maintaining all types of roads across the county. Regular attention to gravel roads ended in 2013 due to dropping state Highway User Revenue Funds, but had been trailing off before then as the funding dried up.
The county will send four grading crews out into the county beginning Monday, with two covering the west side and two in the east.
Most of the roads to be graded are section line roads that provide corridors to get through rural areas, not residential streets. Scott said the county does grade some “primitive roads,” including gravel surfaces, even though they have signs that say they are “not regularly maintained” by the county.
Primitive roads “do receive maintenance, we do grade them and put down a dust palliative, magnesium chloride, to keep the dust down. That usually happens in the fall, October time frame, so those will get that same maintenance. But the
roads we’re talking about are primarily gravel roads, in the outer-lying areas or less-urban areas. Those haven’t received any regular maintenance.”
In the first 60-day push they will fan across the county with tractor-like machines that smooth out the rough rides with a giant blade mounted behind the front wheels. They’re generally accompanied by a water truck, which reduces dust and moistens dry soil to make it easier to work with.
By the fall, Scott said all the roads will be put on a regular grading schedule of two to five times a year, depending on their condition, how much traffic they get, and even soil conditions. The Yuma Valley’s clay-based soil does not absorb water as well, making them more susceptible to potholes and rutting.
At the same time crews will begin “recapping” the streets needing a new top layer of gravel where it’s needed; Scott said nine miles are included in that project for the upcoming year.
When roads are recapped they are also “reshaped,” he said. “The roads typically have a crown in the middle so the water runs off into the shoulders, but over time and the lack of regular maintenance it’s just gotten beaten down to where it’s flat, in a lot of cases, and the drainage doesn’t work as well as it should. So when we get monsoons we get the puddles, and that causes the rutting and some of the washboarding that happens.”
In the last few years, some residents or business owners who happen to own grading machines of their own have taken to grading their roads for themselves because they haven’t been able to rely on Yuma County for assistance.
“For the most part we try to discourage that for a number of reasons. For one thing we want to keep the crown in the road and make sure the drainage is up to par. The other is we want to make sure the road is safe, that the surface is safe, that the potholing is taken care of. Not that a skilled homeowner or skilled operator can’t do that, but we have a duty to maintain our roads, and we can’t defer that duty,” he said.
The $1 million for the maintenance program is largely coming in from additional Highway User
Revenue Funds the county has received over the last couple of years. Current employees are going to be freed up for gravel road maintenance as the county turns to outside contractors for much of the chipsealing that used to be done in-house.
Scott, who became the public works director in April after four years as the Yuma city engineer, said his biggest concern about being able to pull off the aggressive schedule is the age of the county’s equipment. It owns seven motor graders now, but the oldest is 40 years old, and the newest is from the early 2000s.
For the new budget year, which starts today, the county is planning to lease another grader to make sure there’s always one on hand, he said.