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Officials learn latest road techniques |
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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 |
Saline personnel attend seminar on building, maintaining roads
The people in charge of maintaining Saline County’s roads had a chance to enhance their professional knowledge recently.
Attending the educational seminar in Little Rock were Saline County Judge Lanny Fite; Mark Westbrook, county road superintendent; Marty Polk, assistant road superintendent; and Dave Fuller.
The Saline County officials were among 72 county judges and road department supervisors who learned the latest tips, trends and techniques in building and maintaining county roads.
The seminar was conducted by Arkansas Counties in Little Rock.
Topics included declaring public roads, drainage, heavy trucks and weight limits. The seminar ended with a meeting of the Executive Committee of the County Judges Association.
The AAC reportedly provides training and other support for all levels of county government. AAC staff and training facility are located a block east of the state Capitol.
Westbrook, who has been with the Saline County Road Department for 17 years, said he enjoyed learning more about new laws that affect county roads. For example, he said, one law gives the county a 50-foot right-of-way on county roads, which will help a lot with drainage problems.
“For instance, on new subdivisions, with a 50-foot right-of-way, we can keep ditches for drainage, which means we can go back, take trees out and move ditches over, so the roads will last longer,” he said.
It may be expensive now, Westbrook noted, but “in the future, we should save money because the chief detriment to a road is drainage.”
Before that law was passed last year, the county had no outlining barrier.
“Before, we had nothing; it was whatever the county had been maintaining,” Westbrook said. “Right now, so many of our roads are the ditch, and the road doesn’t last that long, so we’re working hard to get those 50-foot rights-of-way on every road to make the roads last longer.”
A new technique in maintaining roads is something Saline County has already been doing, Westbrook noted. The process involves putting a material called fly ash in the roads.
Fly ash is a residue generated in the combustion of coal. It’s especially good for roads with clay in them, which is common in Saline County, Westbrook said.
“They till up the roadbed, put fly ash in and it lowers the plasticity content in the clay,” he said. “When the clay gets moist, it starts pushing out, so the fly ash goes in and sets up and lowers the plasticity.”
He added that the road department already has completed about 3 miles of road using that method.
Another noteworthy aspect of the seminar was being able to talk to other officials from counties like Saline County that are growing,” Westbrook said.
“Some of the other growing counties are having the same problems we are, so we talked about our problems,” he said. “Hopefully, we can have another seminar and talk with them more.”
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