By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
While Piedmont residents continue to vent their frustrations to city officials about the road conditions, some hope to revert from chip and seal streets to gravel roads.
Natasha Flurry told the Piedmont-Surrey Gazette that residents who are part of her community action Facebook page are interested in the possibility if their black top roads can’t be fixed.
“We did a poll on the page and some are interested,” Flurry said.
City Manager Jason Orr said other residents also expressed their interest in gravel roads, but most are against it.
Orr received a call from a woman who was unhappy that Meadowlark Road would not be getting a paved road any time soon. The road was formerly a solid surface that had eroded to the point that city staff reverted it back to gravel last week.
“She said, ‘We’re moving,’ and she hung up,” Orr said. “Most of the roads in Piedmont are a good candidate for gravel roads.”
City Councilman John Brown is aware roads in Piedmont can be converted to gravel but warned it wouldn’t be a quick fix.
“In order to turn it into gravel, we’d have to get the county (road crew) out and grind it (existing surface) up,” Brown said. “It’s not exactly free. They’d bring their machine out, but you have to schedule it and it’s busy all the time.”
Brown said some roads have a bad base, the ground beneath the road’s surface.
“That’s why all these roads are deteriorating no matter what you put on it because the base is bad,” he said. “If you have drainage issues, that has to be addressed. In some cases, it won’t be better but there’s always the possibility we could grind them up to gravel. When you get some money, then do the base work.”
Roads with poor drainage or other problems would cause the gravel to sink into the dirt again and again, Brown said.
“When the drainage ditch fills up with water, it washes away the road,” he said. “So, we have many where part of the base work (requires) raising the road above the drainage.”
Oklahoma County Highway Superintendent and Piedmont resident Ron Cardwell has been an outspoken voice about road conditions and the impact of housing developments.
He supported the idea of returning some roads to gravel from a cost perspective.
“If you were to grind up these roads and turn them back to gravel, they’ll be a lot easier to maintain,” Cardwell said. “People will try to drive a lot slower and if you can keep the dust down with an inexpensive product that won’t blow away, (like) recycled asphalt pavement, recycled shingles because of the oil, it kind of packs things back together. Then you won’t have tort claims for potholes that form. A pothole in a gravel road is usually bigger and softer than a pothole in a paved road. They’ll bust tires, bust rims, but how often do you get a busted tire or rim on a dirt road? Probably never.”
Cardwell said a one-man road grader can regrade one mile of road in about an hour.
“How many potholes can be filled in two hours by a three-man crew? They can’t fix a whole mile,” he said.
Orr and city council members have long decried the lack of sales tax revenue to properly repair or maintain the city’s roads.
Bobby Stem, executive director of the Association of Oklahoma General Contractors, said the typical cost to repair one mile of road with five to six inches of asphalt is $600,000.
“For a 24 foot-wide, a basic two-lane road with no shoulders and five inches of aggregate and at least five inches of asphalt on top would run half a million dollars,” Stem said.
