By Aaron Selbig
Turnagain Times Corresondent
After three years of waiting, Girdwood Road Supervisor Jim Henderson finally got what he and the Girdwood Board of Supervisors wanted—completion of a long-planned, yet relatively modest, road improvement project in the Girdwood Valley.
“It wasn’t until we got a new contractor that we could finally do it,” said Henderson. “The old contractor (HR Redmond Company) just didn’t want to do it. They were not performing, so last fall the city let them go”.
Earlier this year, the city hired a new contractor, McKenna Brothers Construction of Anchorage, to take charge of all future road projects in Girdwood, and the company completed their first one on July 12.
Asphalt emulsion is a substance that is made up of water, asphalt and emulsifier. It is used to strengthen unpaved roadways and to prevent potholes and erosion. For three weeks, McKenna Brothers worked with another Anchorage company, Emulsion Products of Alaska, to spray the substance on several local roads, including Timberline Drive, Alpine Meadows Avenue, Okemo Road, Alyeska View Avenue and Davos Road. They used a truck with a 2,500-gallon tank to spray more than 6,000 gallons of the asphalt emulsion in Girdwood.
Simultaneously, McKenna Brothers paved several intersections along the Alyeska Highway where unpaved roads had been suffering accelerated erosion in recent years and replaced a handful of culverts in those areas.
The total price tag for the project, including the paving and culvert replacement, came to $155, 000. The money came out of Girdwood’s road maintenance budget and has been specifically budgeted since 2005.
Henderson estimates that paving all of the recently sprayed roads would cost at least $20 million.
“The plan going forward is to basically do what they did in Eagle River,” he said. “They put this asphalt emulsion down several times and then, once they got the surfaces really stable, they did a chip seal, which is basically a paved road.”
Henderson is satisfied with the work done by McKenna Brothers and said he has already heard from several of his neighbors about the spraying and paving project.
“People are just really pleased,” he said.