Oil, gas industry boosts road repair, paving in Mahoning County

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning County has reaped a bonanza in road repaving performed by oil and gas companies and First Energy over the past two years.

These companies improved county and township roads in conjunction with their projects.

The road resurfacing paid for by corporations far exceeded what the county could achieve under its tax-funded regular paving program, which typically resurfaces about 10 miles of roads annually.

The corporate repaving was done under road use maintenance agreements with the county, which require companies to repair roads their truck traffic and installations might damage.

“They’re paid for by them as a means of fixing what they break, essentially,” county Engineer Patrick Ginnetti said of the company-paid paving efforts. “They’re running on a lot of our roads that were never engineered to handle loads like that,” he added.

“A lot of our more rural county roads were buggy paths — farm to market roads — back in the old days. They were paved years ago, but never designed and engineered to handle certain loads, so, when you come in with these large construction loads, the roads are going to break up,” Ginnetti explained.

The oil and gas and utility projects have benefitted local contractors and workers in the construction trades, he said. “There’s a tremendous economic impact,” he observed.

“It’s revitalizing our area. It’s putting money back in the pockets of local people. They’re spending it here,” he said of the infrastructure installation effort.

Read more about the impact in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.