Citizen questions safety of county ditching methods

An accident last fall has a local man asking if the Putnam County Highway Department needs a new technique for cutting roadside ditches.

Randy Bee said he was southbound out of Bainbridge on County Road 200 East in a farm truck when he met a car.

Bee said he pulled to the edge of the road and stopped for the car to pass. However, as he was began to pull forward, the edge of the blacktop gave way into the ditch, causing his wheel to fall into the 20-inch ditch.

Fortunately, Bee was on a return trip from Gavilon Grain and had an empty truck.

“If I’d have had a full load, I would have turned over,” Bee said.

He added that furthermore, his four-year-old granddaughter was in the passenger seat. While she was strapped in and uninjured, the fall and the breaking of the passenger door window glass scared her.

He questioned why the ditch has to begin at the edge of the pavement, instead of having some sort of shoulder area.

“I know maintaining the road is primary, but I don’t know why we couldn’t have a 12-inch berm,” Bee said. “I guess I wonder why we have to cut the ditch exactly next to the road.”

County Highway Supervisor Mike Ricketts explained that sometimes his county workers only have so much space within which they are operating.

“Basically, the right-of-way determines a lot of it,” Ricketts said. “You only have 35 feet of right of way and a 20-foot road. And then you consider the amount of water that has to go in there.”

Still, Bee said the berm area would be helpful, particularly with the number of trucks and larger farm equipment that use county roads on a regular basis.

“I’m just saying it gives you someplace to go if you meet someone,” Bee said.

Ricketts added that the county is only able to ditch most of its roads every 20 years, so they sometimes have to dig them wider than otherwise necessary and let the berm area build up over time, such as from sand that is applied to the roads in winter.

The problem could also be mitigated by a piece of pull-behind ditching equipment the county purchased last year. The new machine can ditch further from the road than a road grader, which was used on the road in question.

The downside of the new machine is that it flings debris, including rocks, into farm fields.

Ricketts said his department will look into its practices and see what can be done. County Attorney Jim Ensley also said he would talk to the county’s liability insurance company about what practices are recommended in terms of ditching.

Bee wasn’t the only citizen with ditches on his mind Monday, as Doug Rolfe, who lives in the Bainbridge area, wanted to talk about the continual problem of County Road 475 washing out.

Rolfe explained that pretty much every heavy rain washes the road out, leaving large ruts in the “gravel” surface that becomes much more like mud in the aftermath.

Ricketts agreed that the road is problematic.

“To make a difference, you have to ditch it,” Ricketts said, adding that it has to drain both the surface and subsurface of the road. If it stays wet underneath, the surface will continue to shift.

Ricketts said he will have crews ditching on County Road 600 East this spring, and with 475 as the next road over, he will add that to the agenda.

Rolfe also asked about a blind hill farther north on the road with overgrown limbs out in the road. He said the limbs make it impossible to get over far enough to meet someone at the top of the hill.

Ricketts said the area had been sprayed last year, so the process will be to come around this summer and trim back the trees where needed.

“It’s in the process, but the process isn’t quick enough,” Ricketts said.

In other business:

• Approval of the EDIT plan was tabled until the Monday, Feb. 4 meeting.

• The commissioners approved paying the police pension for 2019 out of the EDIT Warchest fund.

In choosing to give employees raises for the year, the commissioners and county council had to find a way to fund the pensions outside the General Fund.

While the council must give final approval, the one-time expenditure is set to be $201,353.

• In another matter that must go before the council, the commissioners gave their blessing to spend $4,619.76 on a new oxygen cascade system, new aluminum oxygen tanks and two electronic locks so the system can be housed at Operation Life.

The system will not only serve OL, but also county fire departments, who use the same tanks for patients in need of oxygen.

The new tanks will allow the fire departments to trade them out when they need a new one, while the locks will give them access to the area where the system is housed, even if OL employees are sleeping or away from the station.

• The commissioners also presented plaques to two recently-retired elected officials.

Longtime County Councilman Darrel Thomas and two-term County Assessor Nancy Dennis were honored for their years of service.