Road Maintenance

[Grandpa]

I am unable to convince the county guy who runs the maintainer blade on my road that water runs downhill. He cut a ditch toward the fence line, but about 60 feet above the creek, I guess so the water can go into the creek sooner? Note that the ditch is stopped up at the net fence/brushline, so all it does is make a puddle in the dirt road, and even if the water gets past that, it would have to run uphill to get into that part of the creek. Now I have to fix this so the water can at least get into the creek. He has done this before, cutting drainage "slots" from the road into people's pastures; problem is he usually cuts them while going up slope. There must be a reason he couldn't get that job with NASA. :bang:

 

[James T]

The operator of the maintainer may have a depth perception problem which is fairly common when sitting up high and trying to do a job that's low to the ground and where grade is important. Your best bet might be to just attach a blade to your own tractor, tilt the blade and make the cuts deeper where needed which might be a lesser headache than trying to get them to come back out and fix it!

 

[oscar p]

Contact the county engineer. If you can. Had that happen here, kinda. Called county engineer, he took care of it.

 

[cowboy43]

I see why he is doing that, the soil looks like sugar sand and is highly erodable , so if the water is made to run uphill it will not erode, I have aways noticed that when water is made to run uphill it stops erosion.

 

[MO_cows]

Must be in the road maintenance manual to do that kind of stuff. Our guy has been called a "rocket scientist" and a few other things, too. In the winter, when he blades for snow, he tilts the blade so the snow piles up on OUR side of the road, not the other side were there are no houses. :???: I do so love coming home after a long day's work and having to dig my way into the driveway - NOT. He has cut a curb into our side of the road with his summer work. He is trying to keep the width of the road, great, but why does he think our house or fence moved closer to the road and not the farmer on the other side taking an extra row???

 

[Anonymous]

Be glad its maintained at all. Im a mile back a dirt rd that is maintained by the home owners. And they dont do squat including buying material or paying for fuel for me to work on it.

 

[Grandpa]

Yes, I have called the county road commissioner and to the foreman of the road crew. They felt sorry for the guy because they say he's not too bright (who'da thought it... :dunce: ). They used to blade out the bar ditches on both sides, then blade the middle of the road and it lasted a long time, and we had good drainage ditches. Now to save time, they blade from one "ditch" into the road, then a pass to blade that into the middle, then a last pass to blade it into the opposite ditch. Needless to say, we have no more ditches, and they have even stopped up some culverts under the road this way. And like MO_cowman's snow problem, they leave the dirt from the last pass piled up higher than the level of my yard, which is a good 8 inches higher than the road surface. Every time I mow, I have to rake rocks out of the yard first. Yes, hook, I am grateful that we do have this county service (paid for by my taxes), but it has been and should be better. About once a year, the foreman himself blades the road, and it is done right...until the next rain.

I have since used my tractor and loader to fix the puddle problem by the creek and will probably have to do it again. When my dad was living and this same crew would cut right up against the fence posts, he got very creative with some buried steel. They didn't like running the blade into that, but he sure got his point across.