Road, sidewalk work underway

MOSES LAKE — One of the signs of spring is the appearance of road maintenance and building maintenance crews.

Construction crews demolished sections of the sidewalk in front of the Moses Lake City Hall Tuesday. Road construction crews are working around town, sealing cracks in the roadways.

The section of sidewalk that was removed ran in front of the Moses Lake City Council chambers, a wall of windows that also functions as an entry. The sidewalk had settled, which could make it difficult for people with limited mobility to enter the room through the folding glass doors, said Richard Law, design engineer for the city.

The sidewalk was not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Law said. To fix the problem, the sidewalk will be replaced and raised to the proper height. It's part of the larger project to upgrade handicapped-accessible ramps on sidewalks throughout town. Total project cost, the ramp replacement and the sidewalks, is about $496,376, Holm said. The ramps and new sidewalk should be completed by early to mid-June.

The road crews will be working throughout the city, Law said, as well as sealing cracks at the Moses Lake Airport. Total cost for the crack sealing is about $251,000. The project should be completed about the same time as the sidewalks, Law said, early to mid-June.

Tuesday morning the crews were sealing cracks on A, B and C streets, behind Frontier Middle School. The sealant is an asphalt mixed with a rubberized compound, so it will be more flexible and more resistant to cracking, Law said.

Every street will end up with a crack or two sooner or later – the ground underneath, being made up of different kinds of dirt, settles at a different rate. Water gets into little cracks and freezes, which ends up making little cracks bigger and starting more cracks.

So – remember when road work used to mean big glops of smelly tar, dispensed with the aid of big machines? Remember that? Well, road work isn’t like that any more, at least not when it comes to sealing cracks.

The material, the rubberized tar, actually comes in a box. When the medium-sized machine that dispenses the tar-rubberized materials mix runs low, the crew just opens another box.

The tar is applied with the road-work-machine equivalent of a vacuum cleaner hose. And remember how the tar used to be sticky for hours, if not days? Sealing cracks isn’t like that any more, either. Once it’s applied the tar is treated with a separate compound – the crew uses a rig that looks like one of those backpack spray rigs – which cures the material to non-stickiness. The idea is to ensure the material stays where it’s supposed to be and doesn’t get pulled loose by cars driving down the street, said Maria Avila, who was applying the material Tuesday morning.