MT. PLEASANT—City Councilman Rondy Black announced on April 25 that two city road segments will be completely rebuilt and five segments resurfaced, which was more than originally anticipated, because of a new, less-costly process the city is utilizing.
The road segments that will be rebuilt are 300 South from State Street to 400 West, and 500 East from 200 South to 700 South.
These two road segments, plus roads in the Aspen Village subdivision, will be rebuilt using a process developed by a company called Lithified Technologies out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. According to information released by the company, they have developed a means of turning a regular road base into stone, creating a surface that is far harder, stronger, and less permeable to moisture than standard road bases.
The process is marketed under the name Lith Tec. It is a combination of creating a blend of materials and utilizing a very exacting means of laying and processing the material.
During the process, the road surface and subsurface are milled and pulverized and the proprietary Lith Tec materials blended in. The product is then graded and compacted and kept wet for 48 hours.
The company says that monitoring the moisture content of the blend during this 48-hour period is a critical part of the process. The result is what the company characterizes as a super-hard surface that typically receives a double-chip-seal asphalt top treatment rather than the 8 to 10 inches of asphalt of a regular roadway.
The company says their process approximates a million-year geological process that turns loose materials into stone.
Black said the city has confidence in the Lith Tec process because they used it previously on 400 East and in the industrial park with good success. He says that those roads have shown far less side deterioration and no potholing since laid. He said the cost of the Lith Tec roadway is only about 25% of the cost of standard asphalt construction.
In addition to the Lith Tec roads, the city will chip seal roads in the Pleasant View subdivision, on 700 South from State Street to 650 East, on 200 South from State Street to 900 East, and on 500 West from Main Street to Highway 89.
Black said that were it not for the savings achieved with the Lith Tec process, doing this much roadway in a single year would have been impossible.
