Finance Committee - 4/18/2018 Page 10
Alderwoman Kelly
So my question was how does weather affect the list?
Mr. Dookran
Okay, well meaning - like the winter?
Alderwoman Kelly
Correct.
Mr. Dookran
So the condition survey done by the consultant primarily is done during good weather and this winter as pretty
brutal, not just to us but everyone who has experienced it. As you might have heard it is one of the coldest,
early winters that we have had for 150 years or so. So whereas a certain street might have been in very
acceptable condition prior to winter, now it has gone beyond what we expected. In this case, it might be too
late to go back and reprogram that street because we already did all the utilities and so on they have looked at
those streets. There are some of them that might be easy to incorporate but for the majority of them we will
have to re-look at the streets and then program for the next contract. There are a couple reasons why a bad
winter that we’ve just had, how they affect the city streets, if you have a deep frost early on, and then you have
a thaw like we had in February. What happens is that we have all this water that has nowhere to go because
the ground is frozen so it sits there under the pavement and through constant traffic it gets beaten up, because
the water is there and the water pumps up all the gravel and the pavement. That’s why you’ve the street in
such bad condition.
We also have the situation where you have ground water present in some places in Nashua like the southwest
area, you have high ground water, it’s just inherent, it’s just natural. So this comes up in the wintertime and
creates a frost condition under the pavement. So this is ground water coming up and that in itself, frost heaves
in the street, that’s primarily due to ground water coming up within the gravel under the pavement and then you
see that bump in the street. And then we have a thaw again, that melts, has nowhere to go because below it
is frozen and breaks up the pavement. So yes, winter is bad for us but it is inherent in the climate and we have
to deal with that. If we were to build a street from scratch, you want to figure out a way of getting rid of ground
water. You also want to make sure that your streets are maintained throughout, that they preserve their shape
so that water itself can drain away to a catch basin or some facility that can take the water away.
Unfortunately, a lot of our streets are old, they haven’t been built to good standards and a paving program by
itself can’t address those because there are not sufficient funds to rebuild the streets. It’s more pavement
management, so whereas we might be able to pave the street and it looks for a couple of years, you have a
bad winter, you are going to be back to square one.
Alderwoman Kelly
If 'm someone who lives on a street that feels like it is now crumbling is there a place for me to go and find
that, | think you called it a PCI is that correct?
Mr. Dookran
Paving Condition Index, yes.
Alderwoman Kelly
Just a regular citizen | want to know my condition of my road is, is there a place that | can find that?
