Marshall County road crews are busy with regular springtime maintenance prior to the full road paving season. Asphalt plants should be opening in April.
Marshall County Highway Supervisor Jason Peters told the County Commissioners Monday that they’re keeping busy with projects this spring.
“We’re patching potholes, hauling sand, cutting brush, and doing some ditching,” said Peters. “We had a pretty good sized sinkhole up on Beech Road north of 7th. We’ve contacted NIPSCO and have done two repairs on this segment. We’re actually going to have the Town of Bourbon come up and give us a hand. They’re going to vac it out and NIPSCO was going meet us up there. They wanted to physically see it. If they physically see that the tile and gas line has run right straight through it, then they’ll go ahead and sent a crew here to fix it.”
Peters explained that NIPSCO bore through the tile and caused issues there. Peters told MAX 98.3 FM News that a vac truck was at the site to clear the sinkhole so NIPSCO crews could see what was happening. They agreed to repair the sinkhole which will occur in about two weeks.
He also discussed the road program for 2019. The cost of oil went up 45 cents per gallon which he says changes things a bit. Companies have revised bids since that price increase. The bottom line did increase by $600,000 as oil is used for every aspect of the road program which includes asphalt paving, milling, chip and seal and double chip and seal.
“It is overbudgeted. It’s close to $3.7 million which is where the road program was estimated. Moving forward I guess my thoughts were moreso instead of changing and going back through everything is actually sit down and put these in priority order. We’ll work off that and work our way down.”
Peters will release the projects included in the program at a later time.
