By Jeff Hawk
When challenges arise, there are those who cry "no can do" and those who proclaim "we'll find the best way!" The City of Navasota, population 6,296, falls into the latter category. Equipped with a very limited budget, minimal labor force and scarce equipment resources, city officials found a way to transform the city's severely deteriorating asphalt streets into durable, drivable roadways.
A city street committee determined that the most cost-effective process for rebuilding streets involved stabilizing them with cement and then topping them with a chip seal, says Gary Johnson, Navasota's public works director.
"You've
got to take the first step," says Johnson. "We developed an organized
method to solve the problem." The process involves pulverizing the existing
asphalt surface and granular base and mixing it to a depth of 6 inches with
4 percent cement to form a new bonded base.
"We're trying to get everything stabilized and sealed. Later, we'll come back and add an asphalt surface," says Ron Akin, Navasota's street superintendent.
Johnson and Akin established a system of prioritizing streets for recycling and then started knocking them out. In just three years, city crews have completed nearly 220,000 square yards of city streets using the process. Last summer alone crews completed 93,000 square yards, or roughly 8 miles of 20-foot wide streets during a 20-day, 8-hour-a-day work period. By 2004, says Akin, city crews will have recycled all the city's damaged asphalt streets.
And
they will have done it on a shoestring budget. Johnson figures the city spent
about $22,410 a mile this summer on road materials including cement and chip
seal supplies and placement. The city rented a CMI pulverizer from R.B. Everett
& Co. in Pasadena to speed the process along, but otherwise used city equipment
and crews.
With each year, says Akin, crews learned better ways to do things in less time. Compared to complete reconstruction, recycling with cement is a lot simpler and "a lot faster," adds Akin. "And we get more bang for our buck."
home | about
us | about the process
| why recycle | who's
recycling | technical documents
specifications | find
resources | news & articles
| calendar of events | featured
suppliers
streetsmart | testimonials
| national contacts | contact
us
©2003, 2004 Cement Council of Texas
1820 Harwood Court- Hurst, TX 76054
phone: (817) 540-4437 fax: (817) 545-7254
www.recyclingroads.org
www.cementcounciloftexas.org