El Paso County reveals strategy for repairing extensive road damage in Hanover

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) — It's been a month since extreme weather changes created widespread damage on Myers Road in the Hanover community southeast of Fountain, but county officials have announced a plan to make repairs.

Dan Gerhard, the project manager, said that the $300,000, two-phase effort will start next Tuesday on a two-mile stretch of Myers between Peyton Highway and Finch Road.

He explained that weather — which quickly changed from sub-zero temperatures and snow to warm in dry over just a few days — caused much of the chip-sealed pavement to break apart and crumble; crews applied the chip seal in 2007.

"They're going to kind of pulverize the existing chip seal in place, just to get it down to small aggregate size," Gerhard said. "After that, they're going to add four inches of a base material to the road."

That will provide a base of eight inches on which crews will apply a new chip seal.

"We'll put a double chip seal back on," Gerhard said.

Crews will spend the next month or so, preparing the road for the chip seal that won't happen until June.

"(A) Chip seal is very sneaky," Gerhard said. "It requires a lot of elements to be in place — temperature, weather — for it to properly work."

He said that a chip seal is the best option because repaving the damaged areas with asphalt would be too expensive, and Myers has very little traffic.

Cathy Junglen, who lives along Myers, said that she and her neighbors are thankful for the upcoming project; many drivers travel slowly through the debris, try to swerve around it or drive out of their way to avoid it.

"That is a blessing, big-time," she said. "I've never seen this road, this bad -- we've lived out here over 30 years -- and this is just some of the worst we've seen in a long time."

Despite the low traffic volume on Myers, some neighbors are concerned about further road damage from heavy trucks.

"We don't know where they come from or where they go," Junglen said. "And they really fly through here."

The county has a future plan to repair a mile-long stretch of Myers Road, west of Lauppe Road, that has similar damage; however, that project will rebuild the road with asphalt at a cost of $300,000.