Outside engineer examines city's streets

In order to determine the condition all Green River streets are in, the city hired a street surface inspection company to review every street.

At the last Green River City Council meeting, the Council unanimously approved a $28,300 contract with MDS Technologies Inc., to complete and update the city’s pavement management plan. The city received offers from three firms and went with MDS.

In an interview, Public Works Director Mark Westenskow, said the company already completed the field work, which took place last Thursday and Friday. He said they drove a specially-equipped truck over every city street, which adds up to about 67 miles, while taking pictures of the streets every 10 feet.

Westenskow said if the city was going to complete this project on its own, they would have to walk every street assessing each one because they don’t have the technology MDS does to complete the project in a short time frame.

Westenskow said the data collected by MDS will allow the company to determine the condition of all the streets. For example: residential streets may stay in one segment because the condition of a residential street will most likely be the same throughout the entire street. Busier streets, such as East Teton, most likely won’t be in the same condition all the way through and will be broken up into segments.

The last time all of the streets received this type of an assessment was 10 years and Westenskow is hopeful the city won’t need to complete another one for another 6-10 years.

Westenskow said this new information will give the city a better idea of which streets need to be completely redone and which ones can last a few more years with patch work, crack seals and street overlays. This will also allow the city to budget accordingly.

He said the Council previously set aside $500,000 in the pavement maintenance fund to try and extend the life of some streets that are not in complete failure.

“You can’t rebuild a lot, but you can do some overlays,” he said.

Westenskow said the city is playing catchup on street-improvement projects because the funding the city used to receive isn’t there anymore.

“We’re very mindful of the streets, but the funding situation over the last years has been very frustrating,” he said.