Georgia County Government - July 2008 - (Page 27)

Feature Coweta County Uses Innovative Construction Techniques to Rebuild County Roads O By Bob Nickelson, Southeast Cement Association ne of the most daunting tasks any county commissioner faces is maintaining a county’s road system. As counties are expanding at an exponential rate, road maintenance is becoming an even larger challenge as the Georgia Department of Transportation’s (GDOT) maintenance funding shrinks and the cost of roadwork increases. Coweta County is overcoming its aging road system challenge by implementing an innovative process called Full-Depth Reclamation (FDR). In the summer of 2007, Coweta County awarded the largest FDR contract ever in the state to the Miller Group, based in Morrow. The $2.6 million FDR contract was for reconstructing five different major roads and nearly 10 miles of county roads. Coweta County’s road department has been actively involved in maintaining its road system with long-term solutions. Bill Cawthorne, public works director, routinely placed 30,000 tons to 60,000 tons of hot mix asphalt to resurface the county’s roadways annually. “We would grade our worst roads and address the immediate needs as they arose,” Cawthorne said. “When some of our major roadways began to show signs that a resurfacing alone would not be adequate, we began to look for alternatives.” Wayne Kennedy, county engineer, noticed a FDR article in Better Roads Magazine, and directed Fred Landrum, transportation project manager, to look into the process. Like other Georgia roads, Coweta’s roads were built on what GDOT terms as a sand/clay base. In other words, the asphalt for the roadway was placed directly over the underlying soil rather than being constructed on Coweta County’s road department has been actively involved in maintaining its road system with long-term solutions. a rock/aggregate or soil cement base. This construction technique was used throughout Georgia for many years. Most of these roads performed quite well over the years. However, Coweta and many other counties are experiencing exponential growth, which has lead to new residential, retail and industrial development. Development and construction involves moving many heavy products. This type of heavy wheel loading eventually takes its toll, especially on roads built with a sand/clay base. Because these roads were not designed for current traffic conditions, they began to deteriorate. Some signs of deterioration are the appearance of potholes and serious rutting along with alligator cracking, which can then lead to substantial failures. “Resurfacing a roadway that has a failed base is a waste in time and money,” Cawthorne said. “We had to do something different!” For years, Coweta addressed its road problems by deep patching most of the isolated failures prior to resurfacing, but some of its roads were beyond having isolated failures. “With deep-patching contracts now costing the county in excess of $100 per ton of asphalt, Full-Depth Reclamation using cement was an alternative that made sense,” Landrum said. Traditional reconstruction techniques were cost prohibitive, not to mention the extended time element in reconstruction. A traditional reconstruction can take months and cost can be overwhelming, he said. “FDR can rebuild the road in-place in a matter of days, and the cost savings are about one-third of traditional methods,” Landrum said. “We can essentially rebuild an entire section of roadway for relatively the same investment of dollars spent for deep patching.” In 2005, its fi rst project was reclaiming a one-mile section of PalmettoTyrone Road. The Miller Group was the successful low bidder, and the county officials were anxious to get started to see how it would perform. “After seeing the process we were pretty convinced that FDR using cement was a viable alternative to extensive deep patching,” Landrum said. Kim Stokes, regional manager for the Miller Group, explained, “We had just been hired by a private developer to reclaim a private subdivision in Coweta County that had somehow been built to sub-standard conditions.” Landrum and other county officials watched their work closely and were impressed with the results. The county was essentially concerned about the cost and speed of construction, but after some discussion they decided to give FDR a try. “The project went very well, and when we were fi nished they were ready to consider other county projects,” Stokes said. FDR with cement makes the reconstruction of roads a largely self-sustaining COWETA COUNTY continued on page 28 JULY 2008 www.accg.org 27 http://www.accg.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Georgia County Government - June 2008

Georgia County Government - June 2008 Contents President’s Message County Matters Laurens, Treutlen and Wheeler Counties Work Together to Leverage Economic Development 2008 Hurricane Season Forecast to be Active GDEcD: Georgia Is Bolstering International Marketing Efforts U.S. Communities Announces Auto Parts Service Contract Energy Innovation Center Opens in Warner Robins Coweta County Uses Innovative Road Construction Techniques Counties & The Law: An Analysis of Ten Commandments Displays in Georgia Courthouses Georgia’s Grand Old Courthouses: Talbot County Extension News: Youth Summit Teaches Civic Engagement Research Corner: Train Me! NACo News: NACo Seeks Obesity Prevention Programs County Parade Index of Advertisers

Georgia County Government - June 2008

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