As the snow melts and the temperatures start rising, drivers in Westlock will have another menace on the roads to contend with — potholes.
“It’s going to be a nightmare this year,” said mayor Bruce Lennon. “With the thaw and freeze cycle, things just start to break up.”
Westlock’s public works director Don Hamilton said the town plans to attack the potholes, and any other necessary road repairs, according to the same order or priority as snow clearing.
“We’ll treat them the same this year as we did last year,” he said, explaining that as potholes are created and discovered they will be repaired.
Lennon said this approach also includes having residents point out spots where there are more potholes, so town crews know where to go to fix them.
“If it’s a significant problem, they should contact the town shop,” he said.
Obviously, if the road is more heavily traveled it will receive more attention, but the public works department is aiming to fill all the potholes that appear on the town’s streets, Hamilton said.
“If it’s 20,000, we’ll deal with that,” he said.
At the moment, Hamilton said the department is in the process of compiling which stretches of road will need to be worked on in the summer.
However, he said he couldn’t yet identify where those locations are because there had been so much snow and ice on the roads this late into spring. The department needed to wait until the roads were clear before performing a complete assessment of road conditions.
“Repairing potholes in the county is way different from the town,” said county public works Supt. Dennis Mueller.
The majority of the roads in the county are gravel, he said, with the paved roads located in the hamlets.
As such, fewer potholes need to be repaired than in the town, and the problem is more localized.
In the past few years, a lot of money was spent on paving many roads in the hamlets, Mueller said, adding he hopes to see that continue in 2011.
On the other hand, he said the bigger concern in the county is the state of the gravel roads.
There are areas where the road will deteriorate through use and heavy weights transported on the roads.
Those areas become big-ticket items when it comes time to repair them, he said.
On the whole, Mueller said the number one priority is the safety of the travelling public.
This means all high-use roads are constantly evaluated and worked on to ensure they are safe enough for the public to use.
This often means doing small, cosmetic repairs to get the road through the year before it receives a full overhaul later.
