After the old pavement had been removed and new fill put in, residents using South Shore Drive were disappointed to learn that the road will not be paved this fall. Cook County Highway Engineer Krysten Foster said due to the very wet conditions this fall, KGM Contractors didn’t have a long enough weather window to get the road paved. Foster said KGM would prepare the road for the winter and pave it when it is dryer next summer. Staff photo
The 3.4-mile paving project on CSAH 18 (South Shore Drive) hasn’t gone as smoothly as most residents of the area had hoped.
KGM Contractors, Inc. of Angora, Minn. began working Tuesday, July 16 with the goal of finishing by the end of fall.
The project includes repair or replacement of culverts, repair of existing subgrade and placement of new bituminous pavement.
However, due to an inordinate amount of rain the work won’t be completed this year. With the old pavement stripped from the road and no new gravel laid down, the road is in places a greasy, muddy mess. It’s hard to drive down the road and not slide, like you were driving on ice, in some areas.
Cook County Highway engineer Krysten Foster answered questions the Cook County News-Herald put to her last week in a news release this week.
“After weeks of battling rainy conditions, today (Oct. 22) Cook County announced a delay in the reconstruction of CSAH 18 (South Shore Drive).
“Appearing at this morning’s county board meeting, Highway Engineer Krysten Foster said, “Most projects can withstand a rainy spell followed by a stretch of warm sunny weather, but we haven’t seen the second half of this equation to recover from last month’s rain.” Additionally, the contractor encountered significantly more rain days than is reasonable to expect during a typical July through September.
“According to Foster, the Highway Department considered the value of the work, weather, and impacts to residents before deciding to delay paving. “I can’t recommend placing $650,000 of blacktop over wet gravel,” she said, “and the typical long-range forecast does not provide sufficient days to finish the dirt work and pave this road after it dries up.” After road conditions improve, the contractor needs six to ten days of favorable weather to complete paving, shouldering, and striping.
“A secondary factor impacting the construction delay is the discovery of more poor soils than expected. Crews excavated approximately 15 percent more clay and peat than planned.
“According to Foster, Cook County minimizes this risk by contracting a drilling rig to take sporadic soil samples in advance of construction projects. Even so, it’s not unusual to encounter unexpected soils between locations where samples were taken.
“In 2016, the Highway Department ordered 32 soil borings along CSAH 18, but keep in mind the drilling machine is only a little over six inches in diameter. We knew what to expect where soils were analyzed during the design phase, but the risk of encountering poor soils remained underneath a good part of the road,” said Foster.
KGM Contractors, the company under contract for the CSAH 18 reconstruction, will focus on getting the road prepared for winter in the coming weeks. Additionally, Cook County will monitor the need for dust control next spring until South Shore Drive is paved.
The Highway Department plans to revisit standard procedures in advance of future projects to determine if scheduling assumptions or design procedures should be modified to further minimize the potential for project delays. Residents with questions are invited to contact the Highway Department at (218) 387-3014.
The roadwork runs from CSAH 8 (Devil Track Rd) west to the end of South Shore Drive.
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