$350K grant will help pave streets

RUSSELLVILLE — A Rebuild Alabama grant will allow the city to use a relatively new method of resurfacing roads that will save money while extending the life of the streets where it’s used.

Mayor David Grissom said the city received a $350,000 Rebuild Alabama Grant that will be used to complete the project.

“Councilman David Palmer and I met with Alabama Highway Director John Cooper and discussed this possibility several months ago in Montgomery,” Grissom said.

Vulcan Materials submitted the low bid of $415,381.60, Grissom said.

The total cost of the project, he said, is $452,220.83.

The city is providing $100,000 in matching funds, but some will come in the form of in-kind labor provided, Palmer said.

“We’re doing everything possible to stretch our tax dollars as far as possible,” he said.

Grissom said the project involves micro-surfacing Underwood Road, Summit Street, Washington Avenue South and Hester Line Road.

“This will work well with our 2024-25 city wide paving project,” Grissom said.

Palmer, a former Franklin County engineer, said micro-surfacing is a pavement preservation technique that has been popular in western states for years, but only used in Alabama the past 5 or 6 years.

“You can’t use it just anywhere,” Palmer said. “You have to use it on streets meeting a certain criterion. Micro surfacing is a really good alternative for a number of reasons.”

Micro surfacing utilizes a mixture of bituminous material, including coarse aggregate, sand and cement, Palmer said.

Unlike the “mill and fill” technique of removing 1½ to 2 inches of old pavement and replacing it with the same amount of new blacktop, micro surfacing is only a quarter-inch to three-quarters of an inch, depending on the amount of traffic the road carries.

“In some cases there is not a choice but to do mill and fill techniques,” Palmer said.

The thinner layer of material provides a very hard, durable surface, Palmer said, and can last 10 to 20 years, depending on traffic counts.

“Because of the components, it’s really, really hard and really, really durable,” he said. “It provides a nice driving layer.”

Palmer said a thinner layer is used for roads with lower traffic counts and a thicker mix of up to threequarters of an inches is used for roads with higher traffic counts.

He said the cost of microsurfacing is generally about half the cost of traditional mill and fill.

The material is applied wet with specialized equipment, Palmer said. It is a brown color but once it cures in about one hour it turns black and resembles a blacktop surface.

“You can’t tell the difference between it and normal hot mix,” he said.