Posted on February 13, 2017
Author Mary Perren, WKVI
The mild winter should make for a more productive summer for the Starke County Highway Department. Superintendent Rik Ritzler told the commissioners last week things have leveled off since December in terms of ice and snow.
“We still had to use some salt-sand this month because of the freezing a couple days, but for the most part we’ve saved money on the plow blades, diesel fuel and other things. Hopefully that will continue in February. If that does we’ll take that to summer operations and add that to roads we can do.”
Ritzler adds supplies are already in place when the weather improves.
“We’ve been able to haul in most of the stone and material we needed for the summer. We don’t really have to haul any more of that in, so we’re kind of ahead of the game. We’re going to start replacing our culverts earlier than normal, as long as the weather holds. We have about 13 on tap right now to replace. Last year we replaced 30, and we think we’ll do about that this year.”
Ritzler says the highway department is working on its second county-wide culvert inventory. The first one cataloged 624 culverts. He says additional replacements will be added to the 2017 list once the new inventory is finished. That should be done by the end of the month.
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