Is the worst over? Road crews tackle mud season
March 27, 2022 | By Lisa Scagliotti
Help is on the way. Grading is under way as town road crews work to scrape and fill ruts and return roads to passable condition. This grader works on Valley View Road. Photo by Gordon Miller
The worst of round one of mud season 2022 appears to be over although with the calendar yet to turn to April – notoriously known for its rain showers – Vermont might not be in the clear just yet.
Last week was especially challenging for anyone living on a dirt and gravel road as snowmelt combined with mild temperatures and some rain exacerbated melting, turning the backroads into a mixture of deep, soft ruts, puddles and what some just called “mud soup.”
Staff in the main office at the Harwood Unified Union School District were busy each day sending out multiple updates listing roads off-limits to school buses to notify parents where to meet buses to send and pick up students in the mornings and afternoons.
In Waterbury, Public Works Director Bill Woodruff said crews worked every day with many early-morning hours logged as overnight freezing temperatures made it easier to drive graders. During the day, highway workers worked to spread crushed rock to fill in the soggiest areas and offer vehicles some traction.
Town officials are still advising local residents to avoid traveling on the back roads if possible to avoid wear and tear for those who have no choice to venture to and from their homes.
On Friday, Woodruff said he hadn’t seen timesheets yet from the crews or a tally of loads of material trucked out to put down, but the staff time and extra work was unavoidable.
“It can get costly,” he said. “But people pay their taxes and they expect to be able to get out on their roads to get to work and get their kids to school.”
During the week, phones were ringing at the town garage and town offices with calls from residents eager to get their roads at the top of the list. “I understand their frustrations at not being able to get out,” Woodruff said.
By Friday though, conditions were “markedly improved from last Friday” when seemingly every road turned to ruts overnight. All roads were passable. “Some may still be a single lane,” Woodruff cautioned, but repairs were holding up for trash and fuel trucks, mail carriers and school buses to proceed with caution.
And like driving on snow and ice, mud season driving demands a fair amount of common sense. Up on Blush Hill last Monday, a crew from Kingsbury was unloading equipment to tackle the roads in the Pinnacle Ridge neighborhood. A FedEx delivery truck approached, slowed, and steered to the far edge of the lane, straddling some ruts and finding firm ground for two tires. "That's how you do it," said Bill Nelson as he watched the truck make its way. "Use the best part of the road you can find."
Mud season is magical to a 3-year-old on Crossett Hill in Duxbury. Photo by Alyssa Mullan
Duxbury takes cautious approach
By Friday, the only roads in the school district still closed to school buses were in Duxbury. Crossett Hill Road, Stevens Brook Road, Camels Hump Road and those connecting it all posed difficult conditions. The section of River Road from the intersection with Camels Hump Road to the Bolton town line was closed to everyone but the few residents on that stretch.
With just 3.5 miles of paved town roads (not including Vermont Route 100), Duxbury’s three-person road crew has nearly 30 miles of dirt and gravel roads to maintain. That’s according to Selectboard Chair Mari Pratt who said she was in touch with Road Foreman Brian Gibbs who had some tough calls to make last week. Gibbs is relatively new in the position, she noted, and a big concern was putting heavy tandem trucks on badly rutted roads. Pratt said the vehicles could do more harm or get stuck themselves.
As of Friday, she said the road crew had graded most of the roads and they changed out tires on the trucks to get them ready for more repairs this week. They also needed to make multiple trips around Central Vermont for crushed rock in anticipation of the work ahead.
Meanwhile, it was tough going for many residents who managed to get out. Waterbury Roundabout asked readers to share their experiences and heard multiple stories of stuck and damaged vehicles from Waterbury, Moretown and the Mad River Valley.
Moretown resident Denise McCarty said she spent much of the week parking her car about three-quarters of a mile from her Cobb Hill home and walking to and from it. “I haven't been able to drive to my house since Monday,” she wrote on Friday.
The most feedback came from Duxbury, where some residents had not left their homes in days.
Molly Dubois and her family live on Hummingbird Hill Road at the top of Crossett Hill where they said mud season conditions were the worst in nine years. Even with two all-wheel drive SUVs with high clearance, Dubois said, “we were unable to get our cars up or down Crossett for five days.”
A teacher at Crossett Brook Middle School, Dubois also has kids to get to school, so their family put in extra effort to make it down to pavement. They relied on grandparents with an ATV on tracks to ferry the family up and down the hill, leaving their cars at the middle school, Dubois explained. That was still a challenge. “It added hours to our day, including time to plan the commute, pack a change of clothes, and get our backpacks packed into plastic bags,” she said.
Jon Huette is new to living on Scrabble Hill Road where he said his road was impassable to regular passenger cars. “Let’s expand our paved infrastructure from town up to Camels Hump,” he wrote.
It might be time for the community to discuss its investment in road maintenance, said Jamison Ervin who lives on Mountainview Road and is a new member of the selectboard.
“This is the worst and most dangerous mud season I've seen in my 29 years of living here,” she said. “It is beyond just an inconvenience, it poses health, safety, material and financial risks for more than 100 people in just our one small section of town.”
She said the community should discuss road conditions and not just mud season, but the potential impacts for example of logging operations the state plans to conduct in Camel's Hump State Park that likely will involve heavy truck traffic on town roads and bridges.
Pratt said she understands residents’ frustrations in the short term and she said she was encouraging residents to minimize trips out and to help their neighbors. For example asking those with taller four-wheel-drive vehicles to give their neighbors rides or offer to help them with errands. “It’s a bad situation, I know,” she said. “But we know it’s going to go away shortly. It can be hard to get people to calm down and ask their neighbors for help.”
She did stress that residents should refrain from trying to take their own equipment out to try fixing their road. “It’s illegal,” she said.
Many towns are dealing with similar conditions all around Vermont as reports of this year’s mud season find many local officials and residents on backroads at a loss for remembering when they last had so much mud to contend with.
Supervisors at the state’s highway maintenance district offices last week checked in with local road departments to see if they needed assistance, according to Wayne Gammell, the agency’s District Maintenance & Fleet Division Director. Some towns requested help and any local road department in need of assistance should contact their nearby state maintenance district office, he said.
Pratt said the Duxbury foreman said he had heard from the state Agency of Transportation, but no plans were made for any specific help.
The Duxbury Selectboard meets Monday night at 6:30 p.m. both in person and via zoom. A report from the Road Foreman is on the agenda and a new representative from the state Transportation Agency was already scheduled to attend before mud season, Pratt said. Mud season roads likely will be a topic, she noted.
The Zoom link information is online on the meeting agenda on the town website.
Looking ahead to this week, Pratt said conditions were expected to improve to let the road crew start in on repairs as Gibbs has planned. “This is a different approach,” she acknowledged, “But we’ve got to let him do his job.”