City Repairing Mill Bay Road Near Island Lake and Bartel Intersections

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

If you notice construction on Mill Bay road, city staff wants you to know that they’re trying their best to make sure that Kodiak gets both a road repair and an undisturbed drive to the grocery store. Mark Kozak is director of the City’s Public Works Department and says Brechan Construction is working on the pavement that goes from the Island Lake / Mill Bay Road intersection south to the Bartel / Mill Bay road intersection.

Kozak says they’re going to increase the slope to the pavement.

“The only change to the road is the increase from 2 percent to 3 percent crown and that’s to improve getting the water off of the surface as quick as we can,” he says. “The rest is basically just repairing the wear that the road shows as you drive on it. When it’s raining, you can see the wear ruts are extremely deep.”

He says Brechan will make the road surface smoother.

“We’re going to mill some of the asphalt off and then we’ll do some isolated spot patching where some of the ruts have wore through or cracked, and then they’ll do a leveling course to make sure we get a smooth surface to do an overlay over the top and the overlay will go from the gutter all the way across the whole road.”

Kozak says the money for the project’s budget comes from the city general fund.

“The work that was awarded to Brechan, I believe it was 1 million 150 thousand,” he says. “So, we have a little bit to deal with potential overruns and quantities and things which, because of the nature of the road, it’s very difficult to precisely calculate the tonnage of asphalt used just because some places the ruts are deeper than others.”

Louis Rocheleau is Brechan’s project manager and says Island Lake road to Benny Benson is the most heavily trafficked area on Mill Bay road, and they’ll try their best not to interrupt that activity.

“Most of our work that we’re going to be doing in that section is gonna to be concentrated at nighttime, which we’ll be closing down the road to be working in that section,” he says. “The other section will be from Benny Benson down to Bartel Street. Some of that work will be done during the day, but any paving work will be performed at night.”

He says the road will be closed from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. and cars will be able to take alternative routes to their destinations. Rocheleau says the project will continue for the next two to three weeks.

 

You can view PDFs of the construction here and here.