Spring may finally be upon us, but the winter season has definitely left its mark on the city of Cape Girardeau. Ice, snow, and cold temperatures will have a long term affect on many of the cities most used roads. These weather conditions have eroded many roads causing potholes throughout.
According to director of public works, Tim Gramling the roads most affected by this year’s winter weather seem to be in older subdivisions especially if the neighborhood was built within the last 15 to 20 years.
“This year in particular it not just the ice and snow as much as the really extreme cold winter that we seemed to have it just with the freezing temperatures and aggravated with the moisture can just tend to get into cracks and crevices and even under the pavement,” Gramling said.
Although salt is used to help drivers after a storm Gramling points out that the use of salt can actually cause damage. Salt is considered corrosive and can have an immediate and long term effect after being used on concrete.
“We went through about 4,000 tons of salt, which is by far the most we have used any winter since I’ve been here over the last 18 years. So yeah it was a pretty significant winter in terms of that,” Gramling said.
The city is currently treating the affected areas based off of immediate need. These areas could cost the city up to 200,000 dollars. Once these repairs are complete the city will move on to the other areas.
“We’re looking at increasing our efforts on kind of the immediate needs where we see the pavement kind of crumbling or potholing - we’re looking at doing a couple of things. One we have a special pothole patcher that with a certain kinds of materials that we can go in and make pretty good patches that are better than just going in and putting in cold mix asphalt in holes,” Gramling said.
With the severe weather many city employees and departments were forced to work overtime which Gramling estimates could cost the city 40,000 dollars over its budget. Gramling believes the reconstruction will take anywhere between one or two years and will cost the city up to 1.5 million dollars.
