Johnson City Press from Johnson City, Tennessee • 13

WHAT THE PEOPLE DONT KNOW WILL HURT THEM TUESDAY JULY 4 1995 JL In SITED Massive obstacles overcome to make road 1 1 By Joe Ledford Elizabethton Bureau i Most motorists zipping along the new US Highway 23 will never appreciate the difficulties that were overcome to provide them a smooth ribbon of asphalt across a rugged mountain Harold Martin district operations supervisor for the Department of Transportation sees things along the route that others wont Martin has bounced over the rough-cut trails that provided access to the remote route Hes calculated the amazing amounts of material required filled out the volumes of paperwork worked out the work schedules 4 Even modern sophisticated electronic measuring devices couldnt alleviate the need for I someone to trudge up steep slopes place the instruments and then carry them down again 4 When Martin drives over the biggest job hes been on in 27 years with the department his minds eye will see a box culvert buried under 135 feet of fill at Upper Higgins Creek interchange Helk-emember the bear that was nearly blasted out of this world He will think of mechanics working feverishly through the night to prepare equipment for the next days service Motorists will certainly marvel at the magnificent views from two overlooks along the route places where the unhurried can park and walk and view never-before-seen panoramas of the mountains that once stood in the way of progress Each overlook will cost a half-million dollars It took a lot of pushing to get that approved Martin said Beginning with the planning the mammoth task of constructing a highway through the mountains has not been easy Personnel from three state field engineering offices Greeneville Elizabethton and Johnson City were assigned to the job Surveying crews struggled to reach the proposed route hidden in the wilderness until then the exclusive domain of wild things Even modern sophisticated electronic measuring devices-couldnt alleviate the need for someone to trudge up steep slopes place the instruments and then carry them down again Once the plans were drawn and modified the bids were in and the work began it took great effort to hack out trails and fashion rough roads for equipment to gain access to the route At one place near the top of the mountain where a cut was required there was no way to reach the site from either end of the project so that work had to wait until the new road could be built to it It took political intervention to put the job on a fast track after decades of wishful thinking and years of actual design work But the accelerated schedule for the highway brought its own set of problems of coordinating the activities of many workers in the same places at the same time At one point a grading contractor had 300 workers on the job Eight contracts were required with prime contractors who then sub-contracted the specialty work such as guard rails and fencing and seeding The massive cuts in the mountains provided many of the challenges to the job Huge earth movers gouged terraces in the mountainsides for stability Many of the resulting benches are wide enough to drive a bulldozer on Much of the cutaway material was used for fill in the low places but much had to be disposed of in other locations Using the rock for fill was more complicated than it seems The top layers had to be sliced away and the material stored Then the better quality rock in lower layers was taken shaken sorted and graded The rock taken from the bottom was then used as the base for fill and the top layers put on top One contractor used machines to sort stone coarse and fine which was then used on-site He made money we saved money" said Martin It worked out real well" A concrete plant was built on-site to save transportation time and costs To protect the primitive setting environmental concerns were addressed in the early plan- Mind-boggling materials at the recommended rate of 200 pounds per acre In addition to the seed workers also used special rolls of seed and straw called erosion control matting to cover 117 acres of steep slopes beside the highway About 24944000 cubic yards of dirt and rock were moved to make way for the road A cubic yard is about the size of an office desk The 18 bridges contain 11155000 pounds of steel Thats 279 tractor-trailer loads Ponder these other amounts: 0 Concrete for bridges: 45162 cubic yards 0 Pipe: 93 miles 0 Base stone: 828670 tons 0 Asphalt: 288660 tons 0 Fence: 283 miles 0 Guardrail: 58317 feet 0 Straw for erosion control: 38650 bales 0 Temporary plastic silt fence: 20 miles 0 Temporary slope drain: 115 miles Dont look long enough to be mesmerized but take a glance at the white lines on the new highway over Sams Gap and picture enough paint to put two coats on 202 houses The scale of materials used on the new highway is mind-boggling The 6-inch-wide stripes painted on the asphalt' cover 115 miles and required 2426 gallons of paint The project took 103349 pounds of seed enough to sow 516 one-acre neighborhood lawns Piease see OBSTACLES Page 17.