Residents slog through mud, ruts

Melting snow puts a spring in the step of many a Midlander. But all that warm weather means just one thing on gravel roads: mud.

Not the unsightly, sloppy mud that stains your pant leg or dirties your car, but heavy mud topping wet, soft roads, making them hard to travel on and hard to repair.

The mountains of snow that accumulated this winter have exacerbated a problem that comes every year when snowmelt and rain turn roads to mush.

Daniel Ahart, Shelby County engineer, knows that some vehicles got stuck on that Iowa county's secondary roads this week as warm weather melted the snow and rain added to the moisture on the ground. But complaints have been minimal, he said.

“The public realizes it was a tough winter,” said Ahart. “They're being real patient.”

Ahart and his crew spent weeks preparing for the inevitable thaw, clearing roads of as much snow as possible so that, when the melting began, most of it would occur in the ditch.

The roads that his crew got to are in “surprisingly reasonable shape,” Ahart said. “I'm not going to say they're good, but they're in reasonable shape.”

But on roads where the edges are still piled with snow, the earth has grown soft. Adding more gravel would help, but sending trucks to the bad spots would be too damaging to the roads.

“It's harder to haul the rock, because you tear the roads up so much they're so muddy,” said Peggy Smith, highway superintendent in Burt County, Neb.

“Sometimes you have to, because they're so bad people would get stuck.”

In most cases, taking a heavy truck filled with gravel down a soft, muddy road will result in major damage, said Dick Johnson, highway superintendent and county engineer for Madison County, Neb. Workers try to wait for the roads to dry out before applying new rock, Johnson said.

Rural residents don't always have the luxury of waiting for roads to improve before driving over them on the way to school or work. That traffic isn't as heavy as a truck hauling rock, but it does damage.

“We've got an awful lot of rutting,” said Johnson, referring to deep gouges left by tires.

In central Nebraska, York County has closed nearly a dozen secondary roads because they have been made impassable by water over the roadway or extreme mud and ruts.

The snow has been hard on rural roads in another way, too: The plows that were used to clear snow also took away road surface material.

“Most of the gravel got removed when the snow was removed,” said Johnson of Madison County. That means putting more rock on the roads in addition to treating the ones that have been rutted by heavy vehicles.

All that gravel is expensive for county road departments that broke their snow removal budgets weeks ago. Most department heads don't yet know how much money they will need to repair and maintain roads, but they said they will delay other road projects if necessary.

In Iowa, Shelby County workers plan to take advantage of expected dry weather next week to lay down as much rock as possible, said Ahart. The department plans to use at least 12 of its own trucks, as well as four from independent contractors, to get the roads in the best shape possible.

Ahart hopes the rock he has on hand — about 40,000 tons — is enough to cover the county's 630 miles of road.

After all of this, one thing is certain: Road crews are ready for summer.

“A hot, dry summer,” said Ron Bell, assistant to the Harrison County, Iowa, engineer.

This report contains material from the World-Herald News Service.

Contact the writer:

444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com

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