Bob Nold isn’t happy with how long it is taking to rebuild four miles of Delaware Road, starting five miles east of Humboldt and running on to the east. He lives along the road.
“I think you’re dragging your feet after a year,” Nold told county commissioners Tuesday.
“We’re more sympathetic than you know,” replied Bill King, director of Public Works.
King said the road “was gutted last year” and then, reduced essentially to a crushed rock surface, was allowed to settle over the winter. “We let Mother Nature help us,” he said.
Nold’s concern is more than just a rock road where a hard-surfaced one had been for years.
In deference to those who live along Delaware, commissioners approved a speed limit of 35 mph — it had been 55 — when construction began.
“I’m not going to name names but there have been overloaded semis flying over it” for some time, Nold said, running at as fast as 65 mph in his estimation.
“We’re going to do our best to make you happy,” King told Nold, who said several other people living along the road were expected to show up at the commission meeting, “but must have had something else to do this morning.”
King said his crew, limited by countywide road, landfill and airport duties, had been busy with washouts from heavy rains this spring, as well as demands elsewhere in the county.
However, “It’s important to us to finish Delaware,” with the next step being a chip-and-seal surface. “I think it will be done by mid-July,” King said, adding, “You have to remember we’re not a professional contractor. I’m embarrassed it has taken so long.”
“We’ll get it done as fast as we can,” Commissioner Dick Works assured.
