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Potholes: A sinking feeling in Warren
Photo
This photo, supplied by the Learning Express Preschool Center on Coit Street Northwest, Warren, shows the flooding problem that occurs just west of the day-care center during warm weather.
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Twenty-one men working eight-hour days have patched potholes in Warren all this week and much of last week.
Their efforts were not enough, however, to prevent Robert Kittle’s Chevy S-10 pickup truck from falling helplessly into a pothole on Coit Avenue Northwest on Wednesday morning.
The front tires became wedged in the hole, which was partially filled with water. A tow truck was used to free the vehicle.
Kittle, 63, of Merriweather Drive Northwest, contacted police to notify them in case of damage to his vehicle. Kittle could not be reached Thursday to find out what damage resulted.
Pat Calvey, Warren operations superintendent, said the incident highlights the difficulty his department has had in getting time to patch potholes this winter.
“We spent the whole week plowing and salting,” Calvey said of a majority of the weeks this winter.
Without the money to send workers out on the weekends on overtime to patch, it wasn’t possible to keep up with the holes.
“It’s been such a steady winter, you didn’t get time,” he said.
With the weather warming, crews began to patch full time a week ago, but in many cases, the holes have reappeared only several days after they were last filled, Calvey said.
The hole on Coit had been patched about 10 days ago, and employees were patching holes on Coit at the time Kittle’s truck got stuck. They were only 60 feet west on Coit at the time it happened, Calvey said.
The pothole is in front of Learning Express Preschool Center, whose owner, Cassandra Truss Horne, says the road has had problems for the past five years, and she has complained to the city.
“They say they’ll fix it, and they never do,” she said.
Truss Horne said she’s been told by city officials that the potholes are especially bad on her part of Coit Avenue because of a storm-water drainage problem there.
Paul Makosky, Warren city engineer, said the city has been aware that the day care’s part of Coit Avenue has had a drainage problem for several years.
Engineering studies done in 2004 and 2006 listed Coit Avenue as one of six areas of the city that needed the most significant storm-sewer repairs.
City council, in July 2008, approved additional storm-water fees to pay for the projects.
Makosky said the city plans to make the Coit Avenue improvements after the third phase of a grant-funded storm-sewer project is done on nearby Parkman Road Northwest.
Makosky estimates the Coit Avenue project will take place in 2013.
Tom Angelo, Warren water-pollution control director, said the storm-water problems are occurring on Coit because the developer of the neighborhood didn’t provide adequate drainage, and the road is too flat for the water to run off on its own.
However, Angelo says he doesn’t believe the storm-water problem explains the potholes on Coit, saying the solution to potholes is to fix cracks in the asphalt before they allow the asphalt to be ruined by the moisture and ice.
“For anyone who’s trying to correlate the flooding on Coit with the potholes, then why are we having potholes all over the city?” Angelo said.
The storm-water project planned for Coit is not being done to prevent potholes, Angelo said. The reason for the project is to prevent cars from hydroplaning or stalling.
“Our concern is to get water off of the road and improve drainage.”