Wet weather makes for safer gravel roads
Mario Prusina – Times Editor
Farmers are not the only folks hoping for some precipitation.
After a relatively dry winter, gravel roads in and around Wheatland County are in rough shape because of the dry conditions.
A snow/rain storm last Thursday helped alleviate some of the problems, but county officials warn residents to use caution on gravel roads as loose gravel can be very dangerous to drive on.
“When you’re grading the roads and you have a prolonged dry period, particularly when you come out of winter we’ve just had, where it’s so dry, you can grade those roads all you want … that loose dirt under that gravel will not lay there,” said Gerry Van Ooostwaard, Wheatland County’s Superintendent of Public Works. “It is too dry and powdery, it won’t pack and it just rolls around. As soon as some traffic goes over it, it’s all washboard again.
“We’ve been getting a lot of complaints about washboard roads – I’ve checked with some other counties and I’ve found exactly the conditions this spring – extremely dry (and it’s) extremely loose and dry underneath and the roads are not packed down.
“Everything is so dried out and it is causing these really bad washboard conditions – people were saying ‘my road hasn’t been graded’ when in actual fact, they’ve been there recently, but you won’t know it (after a bit of traffic).”
According to Ooostwaard, if you cut the road even harder to get the washboard out, it brings up more of the loose dry material, and it compounds the problem and could make the situation even worse.
The county has even tried different methods, such as oil and calciumbased products, to handle the problem.
“Quite a number of different things have been tried with soil stabilization, there are a lot of different products out there, some of which we tried” said Ooostwaard. “Actually, we’re looking at doing a test strip in the northwest portion of the county – a couple of kilometers of some calcium chloride for soil stabilization. We’ve done a little bit of that in the past with mixed results, but it certainly seems to help. (However) it is such a big county and so many roads, you just can’t begin to do them all.”
Despite last Thursday’s storm and the little bit of precipitation expected earlier this week, the best-case scenario for the problem is for some more of the wet stuff.
“The (recent precipitation helped), but whether it was enough remains to be seen,” said Ooostwaard. “Certainly, every bit helps.”
Even for the farmers.
Speed limit concern raised
A local resident raised a concern to Wheatland County about the speed limit on East Boundary Road (on the east side of Strathmore).
County council decided to forward the letter of concern to the Town of Strathmore for their input before making a decision. The resident would like to lower the speed limit from the current 80 km/hr to 60 km/hr.
“Although it is a county road, anything we do to that road has a big impact on the town,” said Ooostwaard. “A lot of town residents use that road and it’s also used as an access route for the fire department and ambulance. The letter … was forwarded to the town for their comments and if they feel that there is a lot of merit to (the concern), then we’ll look at it real seriously and perhaps change the speed limit there.”