Beware the Snuffleupagus

Oh, Bird! The sounds you may be hearing in your neighborhood early in the morning are not from the re-incarnated muppett from your childhood, but rather the sounds of compressed air being though two high-pressure pipes. With better weather improving the prospects for street maintenance, a company from eastern Nebraska will be performing a process to improve and protect neighborhood streets from moisture damage.


The process involves using the aforementioned airguns to blow sediment and dirt out of numerous cracks in the city streets, and then to follow up with a secondary process to apply tar to fill up the cracks. The process, also known as "Fog-Sealing," is used to provide between three and five years of maintenance, and is significantly less costly than chip-sealing that the city has used in previous maintenance efforts.

The idea behind the process is to remove as much loose sediment from the cracks in the street and then to apply a tar-based solution that seeps into the crack. The mixture contains a hardening agent that helps provide a waterproofing seal, thereby preventing moisture that accumulates underneath the road surface from getting into the crack. By providing this barrier, the chances that the crack will spread further  during winter ice and snow is reduced, and the city is able to hopefully avoid more costly repairs such as the ones necessitated by chip-sealing, or pothole material replacement.

The picture at the left shows the general condition of one of the cracks after the first part of the process has been applied.  According to workers from the contractor providing the work, some of the cracks go down two or more inches to the original road surface. The  picture on the right shows the finished product.

The road crew was working bight and early this morning, taking advantage of the clear and calm day, to begin the process of blowing  the debris out of the cracks in the 1600 to 1700 block of  Jackson, King, and other streets moving southward.

Depending on the time of day and the temperature outside, it can take between 6 to 8 hours for the tar material to cure sufficiently to allow the  motor vehicle traffic to  pass through the affected areas. You may notice that orange cones will block off sections of street that are being currently worked on and residents are requested to pay attention to the cones and try to avoid driving on affected streets until the tar mixture has cured.