Reflections of spring, breakup and the county's roads

Just about the time I was getting the mud washed off my Bonner County Road & Bridge rig, I began to notice dust was beginning to fly on our gravel roads.

The phone calls started coming into the office this week from the roads we have been grading, especially the roads where the operators are taking the time to "pull the shoulders" of the road. This is a process when the grader operator cuts into the edge of the road to retrieve gravel that gets plowed off the road surface anytime the snow falls on a soft gravel road.

Because this is not done on every road every year, pulling the shoulders invariably brings up small pieces of sod, dirt and some larger rocks along with the gravel we want back on the road surface. That material also creates more dust when done during these rare stretches of beautiful weather. The road department tries to have water trucks out with the graders under these circumstances, but we have had crew members in classes and have been operating short-handed. We had calls from some people who did not appreciate the particulate matter created by their roads being graded.

We are rapidly gearing up for applying dust abatement to the more traveled gravel roads in our system. We are well aware of the dust problems people are encountering right now all over the county, but the combative phone calls we are receiving are not going to speed the process up any. Mag chloride cannot be successfully applied until the road bases begin to dry out because it follows moisture in the road and will end up in the base of the road rather than the surface. Then residents will be living with dusty roads all summer long and will not be happy with that either.

Speaking of dust, our Lakeshore Drive BST project presents us with a conundrum for dust abatement. We cannot apply mag chloride to a gravel surface and then BST over that because the chemicals are incompatible for oil adhesion to the gravel. Whatever we come up with as a temporary plan to try combating dust on Lakeshore Drive until we can start the BST project in June, will likely not be very satisfactory. We ask for your patience dealing with some temporary inconvenience this spring.

Another source of aggravation for some residents will be the Heath Lake Road highway intersection closure project scheduled to be completed this summer. This is will be a permanent alteration at the request of Burlington Northern. We will be meeting out there with residents in May to discuss the details.

Once we have dust under control, I will begin to think about the rest of the summer’s work.

Steve Klatt is director of Bonner County Road & Bridge. He can be reached at 1500 Highway 2, Suite 101, Sandpoint; phone, 208-255.5681, ext. 1; or via email at steve.klatt@bonnercountyid.gov.