Dear Editor:
Virtually every winter we encounter a warm spell when the temperature rises dramatically.
Usually my wife will say: ‘Isn’t it great? It’s going to be almost 60 degrees tomorrow. All that snow and ice will melt.?
I, on the other hand, think to myself: ‘Oh no, there go our gravel roads!?
Each warm spell causes the snow, ice and surface to melt, but on gravel roads, because the ground is frozen underneath, the resulting water cannot soak in. It sits on top of the road turning the surface into muck.
If it rains, it gets worse as the surface turns to ooze. Our graders cannot do a thing with a surface of that consistency.
Ruts begin to quickly appear and if a sudden cold front moves back in, those ruts are frozen in place and the graders cannot cut through them. The problem is compounded by the fact that we have not had the funds for years to add gravel to our almost 800 miles of gravel roads, to give the grader operators something to shape. Some of the townships have chipped in and helped by paying for gravel for some of our worst situations, but there are many more miles in need of gravel.
I sympathize with folks living on gravel roads when we get hit with a winter warm spell. I wish we could afford to do more for them. The only solution is an early spring, but even then until the ground thaws, the same problem will occur.
Brent O. Bair,
managing director
RCOC