CR250E Accountability
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
I find your headline on Wednesday's story on the Winona Lake town board meeting "Winona Hears CR 250 Update" as rather amusing. If the quotes in the article are correct, that was not an update, but rather an attempt to cover ones' backside for a major blunder.
"This isn't a failure of construction, but is a fact of a subgrade in the road that was unanticipated at the time." The first part is absolutely correct, it is not a fault of construction. The contractor that did the work is one of the best and they must build it exactly by the plans they are given. The problem is not in the construction, it is in the plans. The second part of the quote, "... subgrade in the road that was unanticipated... "leads to the question, why?
When hundreds of thousands are spent on engineering and soil sampling, how could the soil conditions be "unanticipated." Ask any local who has been in town a few years and he can recite many situations from the interchange at US 30 and Ind. 15 to the Bob Evans fiasco as to what happens when you build on muck. The old timers can tell you exactly what happened in the 1950s when the county originally built up CR 250E. As fast as they put gravel in, both sides of the road heaved up.
Most people in the area realize that if you build on muck you must use some sort of piling. When the dirt was piled up on CR 250E, several people questioned whether it would work and most felt it would not, including the one who was piling the dirt.
No mention in the article about whether sheet piling or poles are going to be used to stabilize the sides or underneath and I'm going out on a limb here, but I fear the new fix won't work either and someone will have to fix it right a third time. Having the state and Winona come up with $306,000 to fix this "unanticipated" problem is absurd. Someone needs to be held accountable and a second opinion may be in order before more money is wasted.
Dave Wolkins
Winona Lake[[In-content Ad]]
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I find your headline on Wednesday's story on the Winona Lake town board meeting "Winona Hears CR 250 Update" as rather amusing. If the quotes in the article are correct, that was not an update, but rather an attempt to cover ones' backside for a major blunder.
"This isn't a failure of construction, but is a fact of a subgrade in the road that was unanticipated at the time." The first part is absolutely correct, it is not a fault of construction. The contractor that did the work is one of the best and they must build it exactly by the plans they are given. The problem is not in the construction, it is in the plans. The second part of the quote, "... subgrade in the road that was unanticipated... "leads to the question, why?
When hundreds of thousands are spent on engineering and soil sampling, how could the soil conditions be "unanticipated." Ask any local who has been in town a few years and he can recite many situations from the interchange at US 30 and Ind. 15 to the Bob Evans fiasco as to what happens when you build on muck. The old timers can tell you exactly what happened in the 1950s when the county originally built up CR 250E. As fast as they put gravel in, both sides of the road heaved up.
Most people in the area realize that if you build on muck you must use some sort of piling. When the dirt was piled up on CR 250E, several people questioned whether it would work and most felt it would not, including the one who was piling the dirt.
No mention in the article about whether sheet piling or poles are going to be used to stabilize the sides or underneath and I'm going out on a limb here, but I fear the new fix won't work either and someone will have to fix it right a third time. Having the state and Winona come up with $306,000 to fix this "unanticipated" problem is absurd. Someone needs to be held accountable and a second opinion may be in order before more money is wasted.
Dave Wolkins
Winona Lake[[In-content Ad]]
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