Lake Road to undergo a full-depth reclamation to improve conditions

Following the results of geotechnical lab tests of East 125th Street North, also known as the “Lake Road” since it leads directly to Rock Creek Lake from U.S. Route 6, the Jasper County Board of Supervisors voted 3-0 to award a more than $695,000 contract to complete a full-depth reclamation of the deteriorating road.

The 1.6-mile stretch from U.S. Route 6 to North 39th Avenue East has a problem with its base, which Jasper County Engineer Michael Frietsch said is too narrow.

Three bids were received for this project. Manatt’s, Inc. provided the low bid of $695,363.64; OMG Midwest Inc. doing business as Des Moines Asphalt & Paving submitted a bid of $726,532.17; and InRoads, LLC submitted a bid of $733,858.09. Frietsch said the county’s estimate was about $694,000.

Currently, the asphalt pavement road is 22 feet wide and was completed about 15 years ago. Frietsch said it was made with 3 inches of asphalt over a fly ash modified base, and he believes the issue with the road is the width of the base was insufficient compared to the paving above.

“What you’ll notice out there is the damage is all along the edges,” he said. “As you notice there is a lot of wheel rutting. There are probably some other issues.”

The engineer’s plan is to have the contract take the 3 inches of asphalt and 9 inches of the material below and mix it all together, spread it out to 26 feet and then mix cement and water into it to stabilize it. Then crews will put 4 inches of new asphalt right on top of it to make a 22-foot-wide road with 2-foot shoulders.

Supervisor Brandon Talsma almost stopped himself from asking. He knows of other roads that were built similarly to East 125th Street North and could have the same issues.

Still, he had to ask. But by his tone it was safe it guess he already knew the answer. Or he knew he sure as heck wouldn’t like it.

“If that’s the issue, how many other roads do we have throughout the county that I know were done in a similar process that we’re going to have to be doing this over the next five to seven years?” Talsma asked reluctantly.

Frietsch responded, “If there are other roads — which I’m sure we’re going to run across others — that have about 3-4 inches of asphalt over what would basically be dirt or other stabilized dirt—”

“And too narrow of a base,” Talsma interjected.

“Yup, and a narrow base. This would be the solution that we would probably roll out and use for,” Frietsch said. “This is a good solution for these sorts of roads. And just to give you some notion this is the one we hired TEAM Services on to test. They took the asphalt and mixed it in with the fly ash stabilized material.”

When TEAM Services tested the final mixture with concrete, Frietsch said they had to stop their testing short because the material was so hard it was going to damage their equipment. Which is good news for the county engineer, who is confident the new base will be of high quality.

Frietsch said there was a time when fly ash was a cheap commodity that was used to stabilize roads. On its own, there is nothing wrong with it. Although Frietsch does not personally like it, he said the problem is unfortunately the road base was not constructed wide enough to support the pavement on the edges.

“If we find more of these kinds of situations like this one here, this will probably be the go-to method for these roads,” he said. “Once we get done with this road, I mean, we save maybe in 20 years having to go out and mill the surface and put a new surface back on it. I think that base will be good for 30, 40, 50 years.”