Road grinder clears surfaces on county's dusty byways

Two of the county's problem roads will see smoother surfaces this week as the Flathead County Road and Bridge Department experiments with a contracted road grinder.

Sections of Ashley Lake and North Fork Roads are being subjected to a state-of-the-art road grinder, which takes larger pieces of rock in the road and crushes them into gravel to be used on the road.

County Road Superintendent Guy Foy said this machine, contracted out of Billings, is great because it takes large troublesome rocks out of the road that can make it difficult to maintain, not to mention unpleasant to drive on.

The cost of contracting such a grader is around $8,000 per mile, which according to Foy is a much more cost efficient solution that hauling more gravel to put on the road.

To the disappointment of those living in the Ashley Lake and North Fork neighborhoods, the crushing experiment will do little to eliminate the issue of dust pollution.

Residents of the North Fork area have been among the most vocal about poor air quality due to large amounts of dust.

"This is not a dust preventative," Foy said of the grinding experiment. "It is a road improvement."

While the grinding will not mitigate dust, it will prime the road for better dust oiling. Dust oil, a dust abatement, will not stick to the large rocks the grinder will be crush, the oil will however work on smaller rocks and dust.

"We have to make improvements where we can," Foy said. "This makes the roads better for us and better for the public."

Reporter Amy May can be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at [email protected]