Progress is being made to the construction of the College Park East Street Rehabilitation project. Fir Avenue, Guava Avenue, Hazelnut Street, Fushia Street, Goldenrod Street, and Tulip Street are being rehabilitated with a process called full depth reclamation.
Numerous rehabilitation strategies were analyzed prior to proceeding with this project and are detailed within the geotechnical soils report that was prepared for the project.
Full depth reclamation grinds up the existing roadway surface and in our case combines it with cement to construct a new base material for the roadway. The cement base material was chosen due to the type of soil present and the amount of water present in the area.
Construction has been underway starting in April of 2010. First the contractor constructed all of the concrete improvements for the project. After this the contractor began the main part of the project on Monday, May 17. The contractor first removed the surface layer of asphalt on May 17 through 19.
The contractor only removed the top two inches of the asphalt. On Thursday, May 20 and Friday, 21 the contractor combined the asphalt street with base material. Fir Avenue, Fushia Street, and Goldenrod Street, Hazelnut Street, and Guava Avenue were compacted and left for open the weekend so that on Monday morning the street could be combined with cement. Fushia Street and Goldenrod Street have had this process done in the early part of this week.
While the contractor was proceeding with this activity on Fir Avenue the equipment broke a water main and caused water to flood the entire street. The water caused the street to soften up and lose its strength.
There have been issues with cars traveling on the street and Wednesday was trash day so the trash pickup could not happen on schedule. The city’s trash company (Consolidated Disposal) arranged for trash service on Thursday afternoon, May 27, and the city’s contractor (All American Asphalt) personally picked up and disposed of all trash within Fir Avenue.
In addition to the water from the water main break, the contractor has encountered moisture levels of the ground significantly higher than those that were reported when the exploratory testing was done for the geotechnical report.
All American Asphalt has stopped progress for the day to assess this additional moisture content. Today the civil design engineer, the geotechnical engineer, the contractor and the city met at the site to assess the progress of the project.
All were in agreement that a few minor changes are necessary to proceed with the project. On Friday, May 28, the contractor placed a test section of the concrete base material on Fir Avenue to combat the higher moisture content from the ground and the broken water main. After this test the contractor will be stopped on the project for the Memorial Day weekend; a water truck will be used to keep the dust down over the long weekend.
After the weekend the contractor will resume the concrete treatment on Hazelnut Street, Guava Avenue, Tulip Street, and any remaining portions of Fir Avenue. The asphalt paving is scheduled to occur as soon as the cement is finished curing.
David Carmany is the Seal Beach city manager
