The in basket: A loader has been scooping big shovels of mud into Peninsula Top Soil dump trucks from the south shoulder of Highway 166 east of Port Orchard the last couple of weeks, stopping traffic and allowing alternating flows of traffic through one remaining open lane.

It was a short distance west of where I’d seen state maintenance equipment doing similar work earlier this year, where water chronically flowed onto the pavement. But I’d never seen that problem where they are working now.

Since the only official vehicle I saw at the scene was a city of Port Orchard public works truck, I asked Public Works Director Mark Dorsey what prompted the work.

The out basket: Mark told me, “The state intervened last winter to do some limited ditch work to keep water off their pavement. We (now) are trying to be proactive and keep the ditch system open and functioning.

“The objective is to reestablish the flow of runoff within the ditches, rather than have standing water on the roadway,” he said. It’s hard to say how much longer the work and traffic disruption will go on. They worked through Thursday’s rain,  but the loader is still on the roadside and they have a ways to go yet.

Flexible log-like structures left lying crosswise in the cleaned ditch are temporary erosion/sedimentation control devices employed for the activity,” he said when I asked. He said they are called “waddles.”

The state and city share responsibility for the highway, he said.

I know that spot better than I would like. Back in the late 1960s or early ’70s, I was hurrying in light snowfall to Bremerton in my retired state patrol car acquired at auction. I tried to pass a cautious driver ahead of me just west of Ross Point and lost traction. After a 180-degree spin, I slammed backward into the ditch, then about six feet deep. The state filled it in later for safety reasons.

I was sitting on my seat belt, which left a pretty good bruise on my backside. Had I had the misfortune to have done a 360 and gone in forward, I’d probably look much different than I do now. Heaven knows how I would have fared had I gone over the water side of the highway.

That’s probably when I got serious about wearing my seat belt.

The in basket:  Ron Reynolds of Poulsbo, says he sees “a real safety concern at Lincoln and Caldart.

“As you head up LIncoln and want to take a right onto Caldart ,” he said, “you use the regular lane and there is a bus stop with a curb cut out. Invariably, people think that is the turn lane. People in the turn lane can find a right turner in the bus lane. They think it’s a turn lane.” He called it “a real wishy washing situation.”

The out basket: I don’t think “invariably” is the right word. While it looks like a conflict by side-by-side right turners is a definite possibility there, the cars I saw turn right when I visited the site used the proper lane.

Michael Bateman, senior engineering technician for the city of Poulsbo, says “The fog line on Lincoln continues to the end of the bus pull-out. Drivers that are not buses should not be in the bus lane at all – that would be an illegal maneuver that would include crossing the fog line.

“It is not a turn lane and is not signed or indicated as such. The bus pull-out is signed as a bus stop.  There should be no conflicts for drivers operating their vehicles in a legal manner following the rules of the road at that intersection.

 “In addition,” Michael said, “I have researched the (state’s) collision database for the City of Poulsbo from 2001 to present.  There are zero collisions listed … at the Lincoln/Caldart  intersection that involve the claimed issue at question.”

The in basket:  At this year’s Puyallup Fair, I stopped and talked with Richard, who has what seems like an interesting and dangerous job keeping traffic moving on Highway 405 east of Seattle, driving an incident response truck

He had his truck with him at the state Department of Transportation display, a mammoth 10-cylinder pickup capable of pushing large vehicles out of the way of traffic when they are disabled.

In the bed of the pickup he had an assortment of detritus that he had hauled off the highways while on the job. He had put some of it to use, prying and such, he told me.

As common as they are in King and Pierce counties, Richard said there are no incident response trucks assigned to Kitsap County, though one might be sent here for a major accident or blockage.

I was surprised by that, as I was sure I had seen one on a highway around here at what clearly was an ordinary problem. And, sure enough, there it was Tuesday afternoon running interference along with a state trooper, protecting some poor devil changing a flat tire on the narrow shoulder of Highway 3 southbound heading into Gorst.

The out basket: Richard was wrong, it turns out. Doug Adamson of the Olympic Regions public affairs office sent me the following when I asked about it:

“One Incident Response Team (IRT) member is headquartered at the Port Orchard Maintenance office full-time. (That’s on Spring Creek Road just off Mullenix Road.)

“He patrols Pierce County north of the Tacoma Narrows, and all of Mason and Kitsap counties.  We also have several WSDOT maintenance staff who are trained to do Incident Response duties, and they can respond to an incident as needed.

“The Washington State Patrol requests IRT assistance for incidents in which a roadway is fully blocked or in other situations where traffic flow is impeded.  When not responding to an incident, IRT staff patrol their service areas, helping drivers whose vehicles have become disabled.”

An IRT vehicle, it said,:

• Can pump and haul away 100 gallons of diesel fuel from a crashed semi-truck.
• Can serve as a mobile communications center.
• Carries numerous traffic control devices that divert vehicles away from incidents and collisions. The one I saw Tuesday had a large screen mounted on the back warning oncoming drivers with a yellow display.
• Carries miscellaneous road-service supplies, including small amounts of gasoline to help drivers who have run out of gas, tools to help change flat tires, and jumper cables to jumpstart a dead battery.

Jerry Lowery has the assignment in Port Orchard and others in that office take the truck out when Jerry isn’t there. The job entails a split shift to cover morning and afternoon rush hours.

Doug also referred me to a Web site with more information (www.wsdot.wa.gov/operations/incidentresponse/) that includes this: “Four to 10 minutes of traffic congestion (depending on traffic volume) can result from every minute a lane remains blocked, so incidents must be detected and cleared as fast as possible to minimize the impact on congestion, especially during peak periods.”

The in basket: I’ll take a road trip to Shelton for this column, which is about as road-related as it will get. I hope it interests some readers. It’s about the changing face of Sanderson airfield, home for years to the Mason County Fair and Rodeo and the OysterFest, one of my favorite festivals.

The fairground improvements are due for demolition, possibly early next year and though it means a new location for the Oyster Fest and the rodeo, it may be the end of the fair.

A sign at the overflow parking area at this year’s OysterFest said it would be the site of the 2015 OysterFest. The event program showed the relationship between the old and new grounds, both on airport property and a half-mile apart.

A volunteer in the OysterFest information booth said the new site, an inactive airplane runway, will be an improvement over the old, which involves a long narrow approach road that made traffic control difficult.

Wendy Smith, deputy director of the port of Shelton, which owns both properties and Sanderson Field’s active airstrip in between, said a 50-year lease Mason County had for use of the fairgrounds area expired last December and the county quit paying the lease amounts in 2009. It also turned running the fair over to others that year.

She said the fairgrounds area is “designated aviation reserve. It’s supposed to be for aeronautic used only.” It may eventually be the site of aircraft hangars.

She said the rodeo has acquired a new site a distance north on Highway 101, but she didn’t know what the fair has planned.

County Commissioner Terri Jeffreys said she hadn’t heard of a new site for the fair, which the county no longer operates. She said the fair didn’t apply for a marketing grant for the coming year, as it has in the past.

She understands that the Skookum Rotary, which stages the mostly volunteer OysterFest, is looking for a permanent site and the inactive runway is to be just temporary.

Fair Board member Leilani Dixon said the last she heard no alternative land for the fair had been identified and that there is little land with the proper zoning for the fair. She referred me to the fair president, who didn’t call me back.

******

As an aside, on the way to Shelton, we saw dozens of tall piles of logging slash alongside Highway 3 between Grapeview and Agate Road.  Each was capped with a clear plastic sheet, which looked kind of like a yarmulke, covering only the peak of the pile beneath. We wondered about their purpose, as I suspect others who drive there do. They’d keep rain off only a portion of each pile.

The answer awaited us at the OysterFest, where the Department of Natural Resources had a booth.

One of the DNR employees said he lives near the piles and knows that keeping the core of the piles dry is all that is needed. When wet weather comes, the piles will be burned, with the dry cores ignited and producing enough heat to ensure destruction of the entire pile.