History, History, it's all History!

I was speaking with someone this past week about our road. It made me realize that I haven't even thought of the road situation in quite some time. We are back to driving on roads that are gravel, develop washboard occasionally, show erosion with heavy rain run-off, and produce lots of dust when vehicles drive too fast on dry days.

Isn't it wonderful that when we are aware of our road, it's with the same concerns of every other resident on a dirt road, and not with great health and safety issues?

It was an expensive clean up, but we are thankful that it was done, and done thoroughly.

The Winter After

Last year, we were all sliding on the muck. This year it is just the typical snow and ice. What an improvement. Our road seems to be better than it was before the whole mess began. I was at a neighborhood gathering over the holidays, and no one really had any complaints. That is a nice place to be. I still have a sample of my lead cow-pies that used to fall off my car. I guess I'll keep them for a souvenir.

There is a huge pile of tailings now on the SW corner of Bonanza Hill.

The only thing I've heard about the road lately is someone from Peterson Swamp Road mentioning that they couldn't get mail during the worst of it, and that only came up because of a totally unrelated gripe about a package that didn't arrive over the holidays. So if the only complaint is about the Post Office, when the road is even mentioned - Hurray!!

To all my fellow Lead Road suffering residents - we survived. Unless something else comes up, this is basically a dormant blog now. I check my email attached to this sporadically. But if you need to get in touch with me, someone you know (if you live on one of the roads) knows who I am. Brooks Resident

Summertime Road News

Road work on Brooks Road is evidenced only by yellow "tags" nailed into the road and ever more digging and scraping of the road bed. The heavy work must be happening elsewhere. Driveways were fixed at the road & --where requested -- at the parking areas where the road material used to fall off the cars in large clumps. The County has put out the second of the it's updates.

I've been told that all well tests came back "clean" except one well that was far, far from the road and very, very deep (1000' or so) and my guess is that there is something else going on with that well, since even the well that is just a few feet from Brooks Road "passed".

The vacuum truck cleaned up driveways, the grader scraped up parking areas, and the County put down new gravel in the scraped up areas - at least on Brooks Road. Seems that the same thing happened on Peterson Swamp Road. When requested, the URS &/or County folks came back to double check the work.

April 12 Meeting

The meeting lasted 3 hours. An audio CD will be available from Nettie at the Commissioner's Office. There will be a fee for the CD. You might want to contact the office first to make sure the CD's are ready. The Commissioner's Office is on the second floor, at the back end of the Courthouse behind the elevator. The phone number is 684-3751.

Testing, Testing

This crew from URS is testing the side of Brooks Road. The road has been mapped out and they test both sides and the center of the road every 250 feet. They take samples every 500 feet. The person writing down the results has the GPS hand held unit to be sure they are at the right spot.

The results from the samples will be compared with readings on the machine being pressed against the dirt. The cross testing is to insure the machine is getting accurate readings. Then they can test anywhere just by pressing the machine against the dirt. I watched 3 readings while I was talking with the crew. Each one took a little over a minute to do.

Once the machine readings are confirmed by lab results, it will be much faster for them to test, and they can test anywhere they can take this machine. It is about the size of hand held blender.

Earlier I had been out walking and spoke with them, the vacuum crew and one of the drivers of a County grader. They seem to be working the road as a unit.

The road has already been marked with spray paint colored arrows for the vacuum crew. The testing crew seems to be the supervisors. The grader comes along behind and cleans up anything the testing crew finds on this pass up the road.

While I was out for my walk, the County Road Crew had to do some grading because the machine found some lead at one spot.

I have to admit, this is the first time I am beginning to feel comfortable with the clean up efforts.
It seems to be very thorough. And this is just the preliminary work!

Roadside clean-up crew.

This crew is vacuuming up the side of Brooks Road in places that it would be hard for the grader to get. One crewman said he expected to spend a week to a week and a half on the job.

Road

The County is still working at removing material from Peterson Swamp Road. They continue to work 12 hour days 6 days a week. The water truck sprays both Peterson Swamp Road and Brooks Road, as well as the intersections where the trucks turn (eg - Evans Cutoff & Williams Lake Roads)