Road department accelerating summer maintenance schedule

Sparta-Within the next month or so, Sparta roadways will have undergone a significant number of changes. Summer street repair began early this week. Among the first orders of business are changes to the to Haywards and South Haywards roads, both of which will be completely reclaimed and paved. This roadwork is scheduled to began on Monday and will take several weeks to conclude. Other Sparta roadways will soon be treated with oil and stone. During this process, a layer of liquid polymer asphalt is sprayed onto the roadway and then covered with a large number of small stones. As automobiles then drive on the surface, stones are pushed into the roadway. As this happens, the small stones that are not pushed down work their way to the edge of the road. After the process completes, the leftover stones are picked up and removed from the road. Although the oil and stone resurfacing process itself is fast to complete, roads that are not routinely traveled could take quite a bit of time to return to normal. "If the road has been recently oiled and stoned, please drive 10 miles per hour or according to conditions of the road," said Department of Public Works Director Tom Spring, adding that drivers should use "common sense" like in snow conditions when determining their rate of speed. Highly traveled roads like East Mountain will not take a long time for the stone to be pushed down. "However, you better be going slow when the road is first complete or you will kick up a great deal of stone," said Spring. Lesser traveled roads like Birch Parkway will be treated with a smaller stone, and it will take a longer time for the stone to make its' way to the edges of the road. Spring added that leftover stones cannot not be picked up on extremely hot days, because they stick to the oil. On average, he said that the stone would be removed two weeks after being applied. Last Friday, White Lake Road began being oiled and stoned.