(PHOTO AND STORY: KHQ.COM)
Potholes continue to plague our streets and a lot of you have been asking us to look into why it seems like there’s no end in sight. Here’s the problem – it’s the wet weather.
The city says pothole crews have been out and about around the city, but new ones continue to form from all the rain. The ground beneath the roadbed hasn’t dried out, so the ground continues to shift.
The other problem is that not all of the damage on the road is a pothole. There’s something that happens to roads called delamination, which essentially is when the top layer of asphalt has come off or the pavement has broken up. To fix that, the city usually paves over all that damage, but in order to make that fix last longer, they need to wait until the road dries out to do so.
“As conditions improve, as the weather improves, we'll be able to deal with those damaged sections as well,” says Marlene Feist, a spokeswoman with the city.
The city is working on a slightly revised maintenance schedule for spring and summer that will address the areas that have been badly hurt from this winter.