LAKEPORT — As part of two road improvement projects, construction crews in Lakeport continue to pour asphalt. One of the projects, the South Main Street rehabilitation, will be finished in about two to three weeks, according to the city of Lakeport”s Utilities Superintendent Doug Grider.
The project is one of five capitol improvement road projects underway that typically cost more than $100,000 to fund. In the last 10 years, Grider said, the city hasn”t been able to afford many capitol improvement projects. “For a small community, five capital improvement projects at once is a lot, considering that in the past we sometimes didn”t have a single capital project for one to two years,” Grider said.
The last major project was the round about located on “hamburger hill” and the boat ramp in Lakeport.
There are two reasons the city has been able to afford the costly projects, which are in addition to separate on-going maintenance projects. “The Indian gaming funds are one of the reasons we”ve been able to pay for these projects,” Grider said. The funds have been paying for the improvement of roads for three years. “It definitely helps off-set the costs that the rest of the city is paying.”
The other reason funding is available is the half-cent sales tax?measure I?voters approved in 2004. “All of that money is going directly down on the ground, so voters can feel good about that,” Grider said. He explained that sometimes when cities get money, they have to pay staff to allocate the funds. “But that”s not the case with measure I funds. All of that money is being used for projects.”
Grider said if it weren”t for these two revenue sources, the projects “would not be happening.” He said he thinks the company, Granite Construction, that the city hired to do the work, is doing a fine job. He also thinks the success of the projects is due to city council members listening to citizens” wishes for improved roads in Lakeport.
The need for the projects cannot be emphasized enough, Grider said, due to the rapid growth in the city and county-wide. Ten years ago, the city saw 2,000 to 3,000 cars travel through in one day. Now that number exceeds 12,000 per day. The traffic directly adds to a problem that Grider called “the death of roads.”
Water can erode the roads by seeping into cracks. “The pressure from your tire transmits through asphalt, because it”s flexible to a degree. So as all the traffic rolls down the road, the tire shoves the asphalt down. If there”s water underneath, the pressure from the tire creates a hydraulic action where the water pushes back up on the outside of where the tire is. The pavement moves up and down to the point where it moves past its flexibility point and starts to tear and becomes a crack,” Grider said.
To keep the water away from roads, a drainage project to build culverts is underway. Unlike the South Main Street Project, it won”t be finished in just a few weeks. Grider is not sure when it will be completed. “It”s proved to be a challenge to divert the water on the flat roadway between Industrial Ave. and Campbell lane. We”ve been trying to come up with a design that works. It”s not an easy task. You can”t just raise the road up, because it would flood the people behind it.” He said the new design is nearly finished, and then the work can be continued.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
