Fayette County Engineer Steve Luebbe recently highlighted several projects expected to be completed in 2020 including an expansion to the county landfill.
Last year, the Fayette County Commissioners entered into a $407,067 contract with King Environmental Group for Phase A of the Fayette County Construction and Demolition Debris Landfill (C&D) Expansion project. According to commissioner Tony Anderson, the current construction and demolition landfill is filling up. He said the project will require a base built to it and a road built back to it.
“It provides opportunity for the community not to haul further,” Anderson said in a previous article. “We’ve built as high as we can with the slopes we’re allowed. We’re basically continuing in the same field where it is, but it will be considered a new C&D Landfill—so it’s just expansion.”
Overall, the cost is closer to $600,000 total for the two-acre expansion, Luebbe said on Friday, after the other phases are complete, and this new site will replace the current six-acre landfill that took approximately 20 years to fill. Residents who currently deliver trash to the landfill will see no change in the process for them, but the county will have a bit more work dealing with the new landfill.
“There are a lot of regulations from the EPA that have been passed since that landfill was built in the 1990s,” Luebbe said. “One of the big differences is the technology and regulations used to handle the leachate (water that has percolated through a solid and leached out some of the constituents) collection because it needs to be pumped, treated, recycled or whatever is necessary before it gets to the ground water. So we also decided to keep it in more manageable two-acre chunks so it is much easier to handle the leachate and other issues with running a more modern landfill. The new area is a bit west of the current one (on Robinson Road) and it should be finished by May.”
Luebbe also mentioned four potential bridge projects that could occur this year. Two of the bridges — on Flakes Ford Road west of State Route 41 and on Brock Road just east of Prairie Road — could have started in fall of last year but unfortunately were unable to and have been slated for a spring start this year. The other two bridges — a replacement on Bush Road and an extension on Compton Road — are expected to go out for bid this year, but with certain materials such as pre-stressed box beams being a little more difficult to get, this is all subject to the timing of available materials and contractors.
“Usually when it is an Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) led project we take who we get in terms of contractors and suppliers,” Luebbe said. “All of the other times when we decide on a supplier it is entirely price-driven. There are not a ton of local suppliers for everything we could use, but we use them when we can because it can really cost a lot to get materials delivered so we do try to buy as locally as possible. It also helps that some of the businesses we work with, like the Melvin Stone Company, do great work around the community and always do right by us.”
Finally, the county will see approximately 20 miles of paving and 17 miles of chip seal this year in various areas, including Bloomingburg-New Holland Road.
Luebbe said Friday that for a couple years now the county has participated in a research project on various asphalt to fiber road mixes to try and help other rural counties — and other engineers in the state — find a nice mixture that could allow the roads to be used for longer, thus saving money on fixing roads. He said this was done to Washington Waterloo Road sometime last year, so they are still waiting for results as typically a standard mix could last anywhere from 10 to 12 years. The idea though is that these fiber/asphalt mix roads could last upwards of 15 years — if the research proves accurate.
If all goes well, Bloomingburg-New Holland Road will be another research repair that is expected to try a few different mixes and see if any of them are a winner.
“Ideally, we want to help develop a better, longer-lasting product,” Luebbe said. “Typically we see micro-cracking and raveling occur and we are hoping this mix helps to hold the pavement together better and stops some of those issues. It is about $20 dollars per cubic yard and would add about $6,000 to $8,000 dollars per mile, but could last up to three years longer than the standard currently. We don’t use a standard ODOT mix on our roads, though we use a slightly different mix that is much better for our area, and in fact we have gotten calls about our mix from various other counties who want to see if it works for them.”
Stay with the Record-Herald for more coverage of upcoming projects in the county. The information in this article was provided by Fayette County Engineer Steve Luebbe.
Reach Martin Graham at (740) 313-0351 or on Twitter @MartiTheNewsGuy.
