On a stretch of Northeast 130th Avenue near Heritage High School, Clark County work crews performed their labor at a spry, steady pace Tuesday afternoon in hopes of using a break in the wet weather to chip away at the pothole problem that’s vexed commuters in the wake of last month’s unusually wintry weather.
A crew member dunked a brush into a bucket of tack, a thick and sticky liquid, that he used to line the inside of a long pothole on the street. With the pothole lined, the crew shoveled asphalt into the pothole and dusted it with sand to soak up any excess tack. After a crew member blasted it with a leafblower, the cold-mix patch was complete, and there was one less pothole in Clark County.
A month after nearly a foot of snow fell on the region, work crews from the city of Vancouver, Clark County and state agencies have been trying to address the many potholes that have pockmarked roadways. But with precipitation in the forecast, work on the widespread problem will be steady, but, at times, slow-going.
“There are so many elements you’re trying to fight,” said John May, a crew chief with Clark County Public Works, as workers continued filling potholes along Northeast 130th Avenue. Under more ideal circumstances, he said, the potholes would be milled out for a better patch. But he said crews were working briskly to take advantage of the dry weather and to finish work on a particularly affected stretch of Northeast 130th Avenue before Heritage High let out.
“We took care of a really bad one where cars were bottoming out,” he said of a recent pothole patch his crew completed on Northeast 199th Street.
Scott Wilson, Clark County Public Works road maintenance division manager, said that potholes tend to form between November and May.
He said that there aren’t any roads that were particularly worse than others. Instead, it’s “been pretty much a countywide problem through our road system,” he said.
“I think this is one of the worst winters I’ve seen locally,” said Wilson. “We have a lot more potholes than previous winters because of the snow and freezing rain.”
According to Wilson, since Jan. 19, the county has received 201 customer service calls regarding potholes. Crews don’t count the number of potholes they fill, but so far, they have used 57,800 pounds of material for cold-mix patches, according to Wilson who figured that means over 2,300 potholes have been filled by county road work crews.
Wilson said that crews are assigned to work on areas that have potholes, and on dry days they will lay down cold patches. However, he said that the fix is often just a “Band-Aid.”
“Depending on the traffic conditions and the loads, it will wear away,” he said. A more permanent fix is laying down hot-mix asphalt he said, but he noted that can only be done during the warmer months.
Potholes form after water seeps into the cracks in the pavement. That water turns into ice and expands when the temperatures drop. When the ice melts, it leaves a gap inside the pavement that crumbles into a pothole as traffic puts weight on it.
In an email, Loretta Callahan, public information officer for the city of Vancouver Department of Public Works, wrote that between Jan. 22 and Feb. 13, the city had received 229 requests for service regarding potholes, and about 2,175 potholes had been filled.
Bart Treece, spokesman for the Washington State Department of Transportation, echoed that it’s difficult to address so many potholes during the rainy season. He said he was still crunching numbers on the work crews have done so far but noted that a stretch of state Highway 500 was particularly bad.
“It’s not unique to this area,” said Treece of the pothole problem. “We’ve had a pretty hard winter.”
Treece said that some work had been done to patch potholes on Interstate 5. Don Hamilton, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said he didn’t know when crews would get to potholes on the Oregon side of I-5, but he said it’s “high on the list.”
In the meantime, he said they’ll be checking the weather forecasts waiting for a break in the rain.
“You can’t patch a pothole that’s full of water,” he said.
