The Greene County Secondary Roads Department has their work cut out for them this summer.

County Engineer Wade Weiss says a major project was one that was unforeseen, and it was the damage done to the 750 miles of gravel roads in the county from the winter and spring seasons. Weiss tells Raccoon Valley Radio the wet conditions made the gravel roads soft and then the issue was compounded with heavy loads during early planting time.

“Everybody can see where the mud has pushed up through the gravel (due to) heavy loading. Obviously there’s feed trucks, there’s manure hauling, there’s a lot of activities that are very heavy loads that are out on the roads and have to be. They did do significant damage because the roads have not been able to support those loads.”

Weiss adds that the secondary roads department will spend the entire summer covering the whole county with material to repair all of the gravel roads. In a normal year, Weiss says they use 65,000-tons of gravel, 15,000-tons of limestone and 5,000-tons of crushed concrete to do regular gravel road maintenance. This year, he anticipates using 80,000-tons of gravel, 40,000-tons of limestone and 15,000-tons of crushed concrete.    

Another project that will start this summer is repairing county roads in the northern portion of the county, due to damage caused by the wind turbine projects from MidAmerican Energy. The County received close to $1 million in reimbursement funds from MidAmerican for repairs. Weiss says secondary roads crews will tackle those projects as time allows. Work will be on P-46 and E-26 east of Dana.