Second Round of Elkins Paving Work Begins Wednesday

Elkins, W. Va., October 5, 2020:  Elkins officials have adjusted the city budget to fund additional street repaving this fall. The fall paving project, during which contractors plan to lay fresh asphalt on sections of city streets totaling more than one and a half miles in length, follows a spring paving project that repaved more than a mile’s worth of city streets. Work is scheduled to begin Wednesday.

“We budget around $100,000 for street repaving each fiscal year, and that’s about what the spring paving work cost,” says Bob Pingley, the operations manager for the City of Elkins. “This summer, we decided to rework the budget so that we could fund a second round of paving.”

Pingley explains that several factors can limit the scope of city paving projects, which are contracted to private companies specializing in asphalt work.

“With paving, we’re at the mercy of contractor availability,” he says. “The paving contracts that a city the size of Elkins puts out are small potatoes compared to the DOH contracts, so we typically have to wait until contractors finish the big highway jobs before they will turn to our projects.”

In addition to the volume of DOH paving work, weather can also delay the city’s paving projects. Downpours can be detrimental to fresh asphalt installation, so crews typically postpone work when heavy rain is expected.

“The more it rains in a given year, the longer those DOH projects can take, and the longer it takes our contractor to get to our projects,” says Pingley. “Some years, depending on the weather and the number of contracts DOH puts out, we can’t get any repaving in at all. When we get a chance to double up, like this year, we like to take it, because next year could be one of those years when we are prevented from getting any paving done.”

For more information about street paving and patching in Elkins, see: www.bit.ly/ElkinsPaving