September 26, 2024

By Lane Kimble

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. — For the next few weeks, you’ll have to forgive Paul Church if he’s a little preoccupied.

“When Mother Nature’s on your side, you can get a lot done,” the project manager said.

His crews aren’t just busy in Chippewa Falls because it’s finally dry.  No, there’s another reason.

“All of the mainline work has to be done after Labor Day and before Memorial Day,” Church said.

Did you catch that?  Not paving for the three-and-a-half months between those holidays but the much shorter windows before and after.  With $36 million on the line, JPS and subcontractors including Trierweiler, Smith Restoration, Mega Rentals, and Century Traffic are rebuilding about 4 1/2 miles of northbound US-53 this fall.  They’ll do the southbound stretch next year.

Crews did the non-mainline work they could during the summer, but milling up seven inches of asphalt and a layer of concrete underneath couldn’t start until Sept. 3.

JPS hauls the old roadway to two recycling sites nearby, crushes it, then hauls it back and lays it down as base course.  That costs a little more in trucking expenses, but actually saves some time in the overall process.

“The quality of the material is great, we’re reusing what’s technically a waste product incorporating it back into the jobs… that’s a tremendous thing for us and for everybody,” Church said.

Of course, this wouldn’t be quite as interesting without one more catch.  Continuous steel reinforcement runs for miles up and down the old concrete.

“Essentially [we have] four backhoes working on removing… it’s a lot of work,” Church said.  “It takes a lot of forces on our end.”

All that hustle and hard work should pay off if they hit an Oct. 30 deadline to have northbound lanes back open.  Still, church knows it’s important to stop and smell the rubble… even for just a moment.

“When you’ve got this many forces and this many crews and you’re able to stay organized and Mother Nature’s helping and we’ve got great employees, it’s just being able to stand back at the end of the day and see really what you guys are accomplishing,” Church said.