Grand Island: Pothole patrol keeps pace

Town at the ready in patching roads

Article and Photo by Karen Carr Keefe

Senior Contributing Writer

This winter was rough on Western New York roads, and Grand Island was no exception.

But as soon as the town got a break in snowy weather, the Highway Department was on the job of mending the effects of winter’s damage to the roads.

“We started about two weeks ago,” Highway Superintendent Richard Crawford said about patching potholes.

He said the number of potholes has much more to do with the heavy frost-and-thaw cycle this winter than with the amount of road salt used.

“It’s an interesting, complex issue with roads, with frost and freeze,” Crawford said. “Due to the fact that we had such a cold winter, once it starts to warm up, the roads start heaving and popping. As that process continues of getting cold at night, and then getting warm again, it’s a continuation of a very ‘pain in the butt’ problem.”

“We’ve been out, patching the holes and we’re now starting to go back over where we’ve done some,” he added. “Because, as you fill them and you overfill them and you tamp them down, then as cars and trucks continue to go over them, they loosen up and they come out.

“It’s not a permanent fix. It’s a Band-Aid, of sorts. Our process is to do the Band-Aid, and then we have a crew, once the weather moderates to good temperatures; and when the asphalt plants open – they’re not open yet – we go out and we mill them, we tack coat them, we put material down – which then leads to a more permanent fix.”

Crawford said the repairs will hold for about a year.

“There are products that we have used that have different mixtures in them that are a little bit more permanent,” he said.

Jeff Korzen

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Shared services

Crawford said the process of making the Island’s roads a smoother ride this spring involves cooperative efforts. His highway crew monitors the condition of the roads and contractually shares responsibility for the upkeep of town, county and state roads on the Island with their respective highway departments.

“We also assist the county with filling some of their potholes. We work together, the county highway, the state highway, when things need to be addressed quickly,” Crawford said. “We have shared service agreements with all the other highway agencies.”

He said sometimes the potholes just pop up overnight: “When water finds its ability to get in and loosen something up, then those frost-freeze-thaw (cycles) compound and increase the problems – especially on a heavily trafficked road, where heavy trucks are going over it every day. They can get broken up more quickly than normal.”

Crawford said that, despite the challenges, this year wasn’t the worst the Island has experienced.

“I think we’re feeling it more this year,” he said. “But 2015 was a cold winter and a snowy winter like this was. We don’t spend a lot of taxpayer dollars – usually it’s less than $1,000 per year on going out and putting in cold patch.” Then when the weather gets warmer, the highway department does the more permanent fix on the potholes.

Road salt was hard to find

Like other local municipalities, Grand Island had the challenge of finding enough road salt this winter. Crawford said the town managed the problem very well, keeping the long roads and the intersections salted.

“The school district also uses the salt from our barns, so we all cut back, to a certain degree, and we all communicated with each other,” Crawford said.

That included not only the schools, but also the parks and the Wastewater Department going out and salting the facilities in the town.

“We got critically low – I think three times” Crawford said of the regional salt scarcity. “We would call up American Rock Salt and tell them, ‘We are very, very critically low – we need some salt’ – and they would respond. It’s just unfortunate that, in the scope of things, we had this crisis.”

Crawford said there’s a consensus among area officials that, as they renegotiate a new contract with American Rock Salt, they find more ways to have more salt stockpiled. In this way, they hope to avert having such a situation again. The stakeholders include the highway superintendents’ association, Erie County Commissioner of Public Works Bill Geary, and town supervisors.

He said some compounding factors this winter included Lake Erie being frozen over and ships not being able to come into the port of Buffalo to drop off any salt.

“Everybody felt the pinch, but for the most part, we were able to get salt – and the county was instrumental in that,” Crawford said.

He said the Buy America Act “put a big damper” on the effort to have road salt on hand. “When that occurred, we did have some reservations and we did talk to some of the elected officials about it.” He said they told the officials, “This may come back and bite us.”

The stakeholders met with members of the state Senate and Assembly to find solutions.

“They have put in a new bill to change the name to ‘Buy North American,’ and that will allow us to get salt – without any question – from Canada,” Crawford said.

He said they could still get the salt from Canada under terms of the existing agreement, “but unfortunately, the price was going up two and three times. That’s another burden put on local municipalities that are counting every dollar today, anyways.

“We’re confident that, from the talks and negotiations we’ve had with our state reps, that change will get done and be made and will allow the Canadian salt, that is mined by an American company from Kansas, to (provide) a backup in the event that we fall into these same circumstances.”