Seventeen miles of outlying roads will get a coat of chip-seal surface in the next six weeks, as the regional maintenance crew from the state Department of Transportation brings its crew to Haines for the first time in five years.
The chip-coat crew rotates around Southeast and worked at Prince of Wales Island and Ketchikan last summer.
Gary Franzen, chief of maintenance and operations for DOT in Southeast, said the work will involve filling holes that have opened on roads, grinding up bad areas and recoating the width of road surfaces.
The work will include 4.75 miles on Lutak Road between the ferry terminal and Chilkoot River bridge; 2.8 miles on Mud Bay Road from past the cannery to near Mud Bay; 1.78 miles or the entire length of Small Tracts Road; and 6.3 miles along the Haines Highway including 2.3 miles between Little Boulder and Big Boulder creeks and between 20 Mile and 24 Mile.
Work will begin on Lutak and Mud Bay roads because they require more preparation, including patching, reshaping and re-leveling, as well as removing failed areas, Franzen said.
“We’ll have flaggers out there. We ask people to keep an eye out for them. Hopefully, we’ll all be safe,” Franzen said.
The state chip-coated outlying gravel sections of Mud Bay and Lutak Roads more than a decade ago, partly to accommodate plow trucks and reduce winter maintenance costs. Other than filling potholes, several of the sections haven’t seen work since then.
For paved roads like Small Tracts, chip-coating adds a new, aggregate surface that extends the life of the pavement, Franzen said.
Chip-coating, a surface created by compacting stones smaller than three-eighths of an inch into emulsified oil, is less durable but cheaper than traditional paving. Federal funds will pay for the local work.
Franzen said work should be done by the end of July. Comstock, Allen and Beach roads were coated the last time DOT brought the operation here, he said.
Southeast Roadbuilders will provide the stones – called “E chips” – and a company affiliated with Juneau’s Secon, Inc. will supply the emulsified oil for the work.