Gravel road frustrations continue to simmer

What’s long been considered Grundy County’s greatest asset may also be the reason its gravel roads are sinking and crumbling at an unprecedented rate.
           
As Assistant County Engineer Steve Cox explained at Monday morning’s board of supervisors meeting, the world famous black dirt, known for its fertility and productivity in crop cultivation, makes maintaining compaction decidedly more difficult than on other surfaces.
           
“Bad base is bad base, and there’s no way to get around it,” Cox said. “You can just take a look at the (Corn Suitability Rating) in a field, and the better it is, the worse your road.”
           
Supervisor Chuck Bakker reported that he’s received a flurry of calls about the roads in the last few weeks and that residents “want to blame everything but the conditions”—specifically, they fault the Secondary Roads department and county officials.
           
“I kept thinking when I went this far and turned that way, it’d be better… It was never better,” Bakker said. “(People) say ‘I’ve lived here 25 years, and I’ve never seen it so bad. So what are you guys doing?’”
 
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