The in basket: Gregg McFarlan says that on July 14 he “had the pleasure of driving to Belfair via Gold Creek Road” and had two thoughts.

“1) Blacktop was recently applied as an overlay, not the normal grind and smooth. Gotta say, it sucks.

“2) Yesterday the county was applying what appeared to be light oil and sand to this roadway. I would understand the normal chip seal. But oil and sand?”

The out basket: Jacques Dean, Kitsap County road superintendent, explains, “The Central Road Shop has completed a series of repairs on Gold Creek in preparation for a chip seal application that will take place within the next couple of weeks.

“They initially ground out areas of significant pavement cracking, replaced the deteriorated asphalt with new, and performed asphalt pre-leveling in a few areas to correct crown, longitudinal settling of the pavement surface, and re-establishment of the pavement edge.

“They more recently returned to the same patches and pre-level areas to apply a thin coat of oil and sand.  This is necessary prior to chip sealing to ensure that all voids within the new asphalt areas are sealed. If we do not do this, we lose chip seal oil within the voids of the new asphalt areas, and subsequently do not obtain good capture of the chip seal aggregate when it is applied.”

A chip seal is a form of repaving that involves pouring gravel on a layer of oil, which form an overlay hardened by traffic rolling over it.

The in basket: Dustin Butler writes, “I was curious about the quality of chip seal work Bremerton had done to Terrace Street last year.  I appears to be very poor.  The aggregate is coming loose and washes on to Trenton below when it rains.

“Roads I know the county chip-seals don’t seem to have this problem.”

The Road Warrior drove to Terrace Street after Dustin wrote and found it is one of several upper Manette streets to get the treatment, in which fine rock is laid down on road oil and vehicles driving over it set the mix. Terrace did have an unusual amount of loose gravel on the surface.

I asked also if these projects were paid for by the city’s car tab fee, administered by what’s called the Transportation Benefit District

The out basket: City Public Works Director Chal Martin replied, “Yes, this chip seal work was funded with Transportation Benefit District money as a pilot program to find an inexpensive way to extend pavement life.

“The  street segments in Manette were great candidates for this, as the asphalt was very old but the subsurface was mostly still OK.

“One of the things we wanted to see was how well the chip seal held up, especially on the steeper segments. So far I have been happy with what I am seeing.

“Some of the chips are coming loose, and we did expect that because the streets are very low traffic.  It is actually a good thing to get a lot of traffic on newly chip-sealed streets, in order to seat the aggregate into the road oil/tar mix.

“On the hilly segments, some of the gravel that was probably never quite attached is ablating off.  We knew we would need to do some sweeping, and we’ll  get that scheduled up,” he said.

“In some places, it looks like quite a bit of gravel has come loose, but we put a lot of gravel down and when I brushed that aside, everywhere I looked there was still a good chip seal base below the loose gravel.

“Although the hill on 16th/Perry looked good, 18th and Perry and 17th from Pitt to Perry were much like Terrace.

“When I was at the intersection of Terrace and Trenton,” Chal said, “a pickup truck came up Trenton, turned onto Terrace and sped up the hill, pretty much spraying gravel the whole time since he was in a bit of a hurry. So my theory about needing more vehicle passes to ’embed’ the gravel into the substrate tar material doesn’t work for those cases.

“Anyway, we’ll do some sweeping and continue to monitor.  So far, so good from my perspective,” he said.

I think the extra sweeping got done already, as there was a lot less loose gravel when I paid a second visit to that area Monday.

The in basket: Richard Brooks wonders when Salmonberry Road in South Kitsap will be repaved. It has needed resurfacing since 1965, he said, and gets patched about six times a year.

The out basket: Salmonberry is a peculiar looking road, in that the eastbound lane is in pretty good shape but the westbound lane is a mess. Most of those patch jobs Richard mentions must have been in that lane.

Doug Bear of Kitsap County Public works says it has a chip seal surface, which involves pouring gravel over hot oil and letting traffic compact it into a paved surface. That was last done in 1972.

The county’s biannual rating of Salmonberry had it at 55 on a scale of 100 in 2010. It will be rated again this year. If it has dropped below 49, it will get a new chip seal, Doug said.

The county plans to do a $100,000 study in 2013 of widening the lanes of Salmonberry and building sidewalks from Bethel Road to Jackson, but the actual work doesn’t appear on the county’s road plan, which goes out to 2017.

About $700,000 in improvements to Jackson Avenue’s intersection with Salmonberry is on the road plan for 2017.

The in basket: Catherine Long writes, “We live in Shore Woods in Hansville. For some reason, (Kitsap County) Public Works decided to do a treatment to just our roads in Shore Woods. We had paved roads with asphalt and now we have black gooey tar with a bit of gravel tossed around on it.

“What a mess it has been,” she said. “Public Works has been out here off and on attempting to clean up the mess they caused on driveways and more importantly in the culverts.

“Everyone here is at a loss as to why this was done when the entire town is paved.

“This is one of those things that make you go ‘hmmm.’ Can you get us some answers as to why this was done and do we have to live with it?” she asked.

The out basket: Blame it on an unexpected rainfall that hadn’t been in the forecast on which his crews rely, says Don Schultz, the county’s road superintendent.

“The roads in Shorewood plat (are), and have always been, Bituminous Surface Treatment (BST) roads,” Don said. “These are commonly called ‘chip-sealed’ roads. After a road is ‘chip sealed’ it looks like a paved road, and the road surface appears to be asphalt.”

In chip sealing, gravel is spread on a coat of liquid paving oil sprayed on the worn road surface and then is compacted by  rubber-tired compactors and the dump trucks after the gravel is applied. Crews come back the next day and sweep up any excess gravel.

“The latest surface treatment is the fourth chip seal treatment there since 1968,” Don said. “BST roads are typically re-surfaced every five to 10 years or longer, depending on traffic volume, truck traffic, freeze-thaw damage, and other factors. Roads are rated each year to determine when roads need resurfacing. Roads are always re-surfaced ‘in kind,’ with the same surface they previously had.

“In this particular application, we did encounter some problems,” he said. “There was no rain predicted on Monday, Aug. 2, the day of the application, as well as the day following.” He enclosed a copy of that forecast.

“Overnight August 2,” he said, “there was a rather heavy rainfall that developed unexpectedly. During the rain there was some emulsion runoff from the road surface. Some driveways were stained by the runoff and we are working with the residents to remove these stains.

“Emulsion did reach the inlet of two culverts, which we cleaned the next day. Once the emulsion is dry there is no concern that it could liquefy again. No emulsion traveled into any water courses.

“The county engineer and I reviewed the site as soon as we received calls alerting us to the problem the morning of Aug. 3,” Don said. “We had crews start clean-up and restoration activities that morning. One of our supervisors personally contacted each affected property owner, and worked with them to address their concerns.

“Many residents have expressed understanding of the situation, and appreciated the proactive reaction to the situation.  We recognize the problems caused by this operation, and are working with residents to mitigate any damages caused. If your readers have unresolved issues related to this issue, please have them contact Kitsap 1 (360-337-5777).