The Lewiston district of the Idaho Division of Highways gave up Wednesday on attempts to complete the Mill Road project this fall.
The weather just isn’t cooperating, District Engineer James Clayton said, so application of the final layer of asphalt, the seal coat, has been postponed until spring.
Mill Road, from the east end of Main Street to the Potlatch Corp. gate, has been realigned and widened to four lanes. The base coat of asphalt, about two inches thick, already has been applied and the seal coat, which will be about 1½ inches thick, was to have been applied last week or early this week. But the weather was too wet.
“Some soft spots have developed due to rain,” Clayton said in announcing the postponement of the seal coat. Without the seal coat, he said, the drainage isn’t adequate. Meanwhile, he said, the soft spots will be repaired and an effort will be made to locate the source of seepage at one point on the new surface.
“We think it might be a leaking water main,” Clayton said. “We will have a better finish if we wait until we get the blemishes repaired.”
Clayton said two of the four lanes will be kept open until spring when the seal coat is applied.
The road improvement is being done as a joint Nez Perce County-city of Lewiston project. The state is supervising the work because the $708,363 project includes federal money. The contractor is Sime Construction Co. of Kennewick.
This story was published in the Dec. 17, 1981, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
