Weather permitting. the San Juan County Public Works department will begin resurfacing nearly 27 miles of roads on Orcas Island beginning on Monday, May 12. There will be a total of 13 non-rainy working days of chip sealing and an additional 3-5 days spent applying a finishing coat of emulsion, called “fog seal,” to the road’s surface. If there are no serious rain delays, the work is expected to be completed by June 3.
Maintenance is performed on County roads on a 6-12 year cycle with 25-30 miles resurfaced each year. To increase efficiency and reduce time lost in transporting equipment and supplies, this year the County has begun doing all of its maintenance resurfacing on a single island each year. (Next year Lopez will get all of the attention, San Juan Island’s turn will come in 2010.) All 21 members of the county’s road crew have been assigned to work on the Orcas chipsealing project.
Road crews will do more fog sealing this year than in the past. With the exception of a few experimental areas, all of the sections of road to be chipsealed on Orcas will be also be fog sealed – which means that a finishing coat of emulsion will be sprayed onto the road surface after the chipsealing is completed. Public Works senior project engineer Rachel Dietzman notes that fog sealing increases resurfacing costs by about 25 percent, but the County has found that it dramatically decreases the amount of gravel that comes loose from the seal, improves the appearance of the road striping and should increase its durability
The cost of the Orcas road project is expected to total $830,000.
Work will begin first on Sunset Avenue, then proceed to include portions of Obstruction Pass Road, E.J. Young Road, Point Lawrence Road, Olga Road, Rosario Road, Palisades Drive, Lindsay Way, Crescent Beach Drive, Montgomery Lane, Mt. Baker Road, Channel Road, Four Winds Road, Deer Harbor Road, Ralph Gott Road, Bartel Road, McNallie Lane, Dolphin Bay Road and Orcas Road.
A color coded map showing the roads and projected resurfacing dates on Orcas this year is available online at: www.sanjuanco.com/Docs/News/2008chipseal.pdf
The tentative work schedule is below in spreadsheet form. Note that road crews cannot do chipsealing on rainy days, so this schedule is subject to change.
Tentative Chipsealing Schedule 2008
Date
Name
12-May
Sunset Avenue
13-May
E.J. Young Road
13-May
Obstruction Pass Road
13-May
Point Lawrence Road
14-May
First Street
14-May
Mount Entrance Road
14-May
Olga Park Lane
14-May
Olga Road
14-May
Point Lawrence Road
14-May
Third Street
15-May
Olga Road
19-May
Lindsay Way
19-May
Palisades Drive
19-May
Rosario Road
20-May
Olga Road
21-May
Crescent Beach Drive
21-May
Madrona Street/School Road
21-May
Montgomery Lane
21-May
Olga Road
22-May
Deer Harbor Road
22-May
Four Winds Road
22-May
Jack and Jill Lane
22-May
Mount Baker Road
22-May
Ralph Gott Road
22-May
Upper Deer Harbor
27-May
Channel Road
27-May
Channel Road
27-May
Deer Harbor Road
28-May
Deer Harbor Road
29-May
Deer Harbor Road
2-Jun
Bartel Road
2-Jun
Dolphin Bay Road
2-Jun
McNallie Lane
3-Jun
Orcas Road (Spot Repair)
