Road dust control
 

Our township is horrible.

We are in a agricultural community on a dirt road. Although 90% of the roads here are dirt our road, ours is a very heavily used road. I would say on an average day there is 60 or more cars that go down this road plus the ag equipment.

There are 3 business on this road and a HUGE diary farmer about 2 miles down. He is constantly running manure spreaders and huge equipment which he has a right to do BUT the dust is not bearable. You can not be outside or even keep windows open because of the the dirt from his equipment.

Now before anyone gets there panties in an uproar I am not complaining about the farmer. Although this is not a mom and pop operation he still has the right to farm. What I am complaining about is the dust and dirt everywhere.

ALL our neighbors on this road with in a couple miles cant stand this any more. The township does nothing. Once in a great while they will come out and drop some water but that evaporates in minutes.

I would be willing to pay someone to spray this road down if it would work. What options do we have? In the past my neighbors put oil down and that did work but I guess that is a no no and being I run a business I do not want to do something that may get us in serious trouble.
Is there any State or Federal agencies that can override what our township does? We have 3 township supervisors here and their dirt roads are very nice and are sprayed down with a brine solution. Go figure:ogre: They may get 10 cars on their roads a day.

It can be sprayed with a solution of water and calcium chloride. This usually provides several months of dust control. It needs to be done during a period of weather that will allow it to dry before being rained on. This is simple to do, not real expensive and makes a world of difference.

I was researching this , googled road dust control and saw the info. But I can not find anyone in our are to hire do this. We are very rural and our township wont [except where they live]

Is there anything that can be sprayed on from a sprayer that we could do yourself or is this a waste of money because of all the heavy equipment going up this road.

I would love to get this issue fixed. My Amish neighbors have kids which actually have been effected by this with breathing issues because of the dust.

My sollution to the very same problem is a hedge of cedar trees. My transplanted trees were 18 inches or less when I planted them bout 2 years ago. Even with the drought they are close to 4 ft. I have some that are pushing 8 ft in 4 years. They are pretty much considered a weed here. I have pulled up 30 or so and piled them or put them in the compost pile. When they are less than a ft it ispretty easy.

When I dig them to transplant I just use a spade, take clump and all, dig hole where I want it. That is it.

Calcium chloride is what is commonly known as Ice Melt, and farmers use it in their tires as antifreeze. Its not real expensive. You can spray it yourself, if you are allowed. It is corrosive, so I'd rinse my equipment well after using. Once applied, it forms a layer on top of the road that holds moisture and clots the dust.

I planted bamboo 3 years ago in the front of our house. I am in Zone 5 so I will not have the issues that some people have with running bamboo because of our winters. Although this is making a decent hedge in front of our house it does not control all the dust.

We have 52 acres but our out building are all north to south pretty close to the road. Although I may be able to plant bamboo and maintain it my neighbors don't want this option. There has to be something that we all can do as neighbors to get either the township to address this which IMO is what some of our tax dollars are for or get together as a community and try to fix it ourselves.

Where do you buy this and how much needs to be spread. I was just told by DH though that this causes the roads to become mush in the wetter months and in winter. Township does not fix potholes much either. Once in a while they come with a grater and grate the road. They have not cleaned the ditches in 2 years now so all the dirt filled the ditches and when it rains it floods the road in spots.

We used that stuff on our log yard when I worked in WV. We only applied it once in the early summer, when the dust got bad. It would last till fall, and that was with heavy traffic of log trucks and articulating loaders.

Not a quick fix, but I think maybe it would be worthwhile to find out what it takes to become/replace a township supervisor.

You should be able to get it from the feed or farm supply store. I never noticed us having any problems with the yard not freezing in the winter. I think that by the time winter has come it has had plenty of time to wash away in the fall rain. Believe you me, driving a loader across those ruts it was easy to tell they were frozen lol :)
Then, I can see that having the dust not blow away could leave you with a good bit of mush when the fall rains come. I don't know the application rate, but I'm sure the manufacturer or supplier could tell you. Your department of highways might tell you.

Just google calcium chloride application rate.
http://www.daleedustcontrol.com/down...plications.pdf
Ok, this is actually a very good article that you might show your county officials.

I own a business and work 80 hours a week now. Do not want the job of supervisor although it was suggested that me or my DH should run. I want the people that run for this position and get elected to do their jobs. I know it is a lot to ask anymore in these times. People wnat a paycheck with out doing much.

Thank you. I am certainly going to research this further. How do I find out if it is legal for me or in actuality my DH to apply, or do we need a permit?

Your county dept of highways or what ever it is called in your area. County Maintenance? I can't imagine that they'd allow you to do it in this day and age. Maybe you can make them do it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease in these situations. Complain loud, hard and frequently. Find out the info and the costs. Complain more. Threaten. Complain. They'll do it.
ETA: Don't let me discourage you. They may very well allow you to do it yourself. I think the Cal. Chloe. is less than $40 per 50# and I imagine 100# would do a good stretch of road.

How many township board meetings have you and your neighbors attended?

U could also pick up a couple bags an put it in a lawn seeder or fertilizer spreader an do the area in front of your house see how it wrks. Calcium is way to go

I'd ask the county to oil and chip the road... They do it to most the back roads in Illinois every few years. They spray down a real sticky oily tar kind of emulsion, then they spread rock chip on it..

Our township will not spend the $$ to tar and chip this road. That would be ideal but it aint going to happen.

I am going to try this. We have a seed spreader. Would you spread this and then hose it with water or just spread with out water?

[QUOTE=tinknal;6598380]How many township board meetings have you and your neighbors attended?[/QUOTE

We all have been to many meetings and also have called numerous times. I wish the township would give this road to the state so Pen Dot would deal with it but that wont happen either.

Flood the office of the county road and the supervisor with phone calls! Daily and often. Pester them - the squeaky wheel gets the grease and when my Amish friends and neighbors have an issue with their busy dirt roads - they start calling and calling and calling. In a matter of days, the roads gets gravel or it get sprayed or whatever. PHONE, PHONE, PHONE. And see if that doesn't help!

Get all your facts about cost, how to spread it, etc - start a campaign with a letter to your local newspaper asking if any other streets have the same issue. Explain how cheaply this can be done.
Get more people on board then all of you go to your local council meeting! Keep calling, writing letters & going to meetings - all of you.
One squeaky person is just considered an irritant - a lot of people with the same problem becomes a real issue in more ways than one - especially if some of those you are fighting are elected officials.

I had a problem with some governmnt employees refusing to do their duty in relationship to me. I called the boss and told him I have nothing better to do than call you every 15 minutes till I get the desired action. I also him I would do the same with his his boss in 24 hours. I got immediate response from multiple people the next morning and resolved my problem. Of course I did call the rest of that day every 15 minutes. I did the same type tactic about my road. It got results. My county folks no not to mess with me and treat me fair. Now the road grader guy lives on my road. Yeah!!!!!

And make sure that the Amish neighbor who's son is suffering health-wise from the dust is front and center in all this..... telling the township that a child is at risk, perhaps with an off-the-cuff comment about the newspaper maybe being interested in the story, should help light a fire under them :grin:

And if all else fails, start a letter writing campaign to the local newspaper about the sick boy and the township who has failed to do anything about it. If you send emails to the township supervisors, you'll have proof that they are aware of the situation yet have chosen to do nothing about it. And if you can obtain documentation that the supervisors' roads are treated but yours are not, even better :)

Imho, if that is the case, your completely SOL. Only way to keep dust down is putting down oil top, or watering it every day. Imagine unless someone had an irrigation system in place (and not in use) that paralleled the road, and could run it for half an hour every day... it'd be cheaper (because having a water tanker come in every day would turn into thousands each month) to actually 'pave it'.

My experiences with road building is this, there is rarely any fix that is both inexpensive and long lasting. I maintain a mile of my own dirt road, with a front end loader on the tractor and a blade on the back (or grading and pulling ditches). Time (which is sometimes precious) and a 80$ tank of diesel gets expensive quickly. My solution is to fix the road, only when it's to the point where we physically can't travel it any more. Remarkably, it keeps most folks from driving down it.... and convinced a neighbor that they'd be better off building their home out where the pavement grows.

Vegetation might slow it down a wee bit, but you'd have to have a pretty good swatch of thick vegetation (cedars, hedges, wild roses, etc.) to make a difference, and that's going to take years.

We live on a very dusty road also and for several years we paid a contractor to put down dust control. Finally the county took over and puts down magnesium chloride every spring which does mostly last till fall.
It also helps to stabilize the road. Before putting down anything yourself you need to check with your county and most likely they will require you use an approved contractor. It would be a shame for you to spend the money to put it down yourself and then have the county grade it under. When we got the county's approval, they agreed to not grade the road till dust season was over.

Yep, everyone used to use used oil (how's that for a sentence? :D ) but the EPA nixed that. What is used now (if the EPA hasn't stopped it) is a mixture of water and Calcium chloride. It is a type of salt that draws water out of the air and keeps the dirt moist so it doesn't blow around.

Short of that or getting the road paved, I don't think there are any other options.

This is what our town does a couple of times a year. It works well for a while.

We live on a dirt road and I would not want it paved. I like it the way it is. A dirt road is easy to repair by simply grading it which the town does a couple of times a year and I do spots here and there time to time.

The big problem is drivers who go too fast. When people drive slowly as is appropriate for our road they do not produce clouds of dust. It is the people who insist on going fast that are producing the dust. This is a driver problem. People being in too much of a hurry. Additionally they're destroying their vehicles. These speeding drivers are 100% not people who live here - rather they're using our road as a short cut. It saves a couple of minutes of time, maybe, if they don't get behind me on my tractor or our logging trucks, but they are ruining their suspension in the process. Fools.

I would not bother wetting it. Dew will react with it. Seed spreader will prolly reach to both sides of the rd going down the middle. I'd just dump a bag in n walk all the way one way till its empty then go back to where u started dump another bag in an walk the opposite way till its gone. See how that wrks n go from there. No need to make a production outta of it yet

I think the problem here lies not with the dust, but the local government. You pay taxes for a reason; it might take voting a few people out to remind them who serves whom.

Being somewhat familiar with local townships, you may or may not have a real gripe. Many rural townships are on a VERY limited budget. Ours has a road commissioner who makes $11,000 a year. No one wants the job because it isn't a living wage and he alone has to try to maintain the roads. The only guys who will run for the job are farmers who use their own tractors to drag the roads occasionally. Their fuel allotment is also small but they get an annual allotment of gravel from state motor fuel taxes. They have 1 dump truck about 10 years old and an old cat road grader that hasn't ran in several years and no money to repair it. However, some townships do mush better. Depends on the tax base.

Ever heard of TIMES BEACH MO.??? No well that is because it has been shut down and bought out by the government. Yep it is a scary thing to be working in a flood area and Government men come walking down the street in Moon suits. You have on cut offs and flip flops. The street were dirt and to keep the dust down they put down some recycled oil. It started to kill the horses and other stock. People got sick and the rest is history. Be VERY careful what you use. Just talking from experience.

Right here is your answer. You need to find out when the next meeting is and invite (and coerce) ALL of your neighbors on that road to go. You might also want to invite the local news too. (They love stories like this.)

Then, each and everyone of you need to start standing up and telling the township supervisors the problem during community comments. If anyone is good with a camera and can set up a power point, you could also provide a show of "This is our road that is highly traveled with lots of dust." These are the roads the township supervisors live on with very little traffic and no dust. Now how can this be?" DEMAND that everyone be heard at the meeting to drag it on. Inform the Supervisors that the following day, the people on your road are going to start a phone calling campaign to ask when the dust problem is going to be taken care of, and will be calling several times per day and asking the same question.

Between a long drawn out meeting, embarassment that their roads are taken care of and yours are not, threats of phone calls, and the news being there and being the "big story" the next day, I'm guessing those supervisors will be over to your road the following day to get the problem taken care of.

You also should inquire when one of their terms is up and have somebody from YOUR road run for election. Who knows, if a term is up this year and will be voted on in the fall, start now to find a candidate and to run a write in campaign for the candidate.

If you fix the road yourself, you are defeating the whole purpose and nothing will EVER get done with your road. Become the "squeaky wheel" and they will get tired of the interaction and fix the road to shut you up.

There are other options.
We live on a river and our section of county road also fronts a pond and creek. I wouldn't want oil running into that. What we used when we put down dust control (through a contractor) ourselves was a ligno-sulfonatemade made from tree sap. It worked very well and does not have any adverse affect on water. When the county took over, they switched to magnesium chloride.

Our county sprays calcium chloride twice a year. We live on a small dirt road, but our neighbors think it's a drag strip. Speed limit is 20, people typically go about 60. Calcium chloride works great for the few months after it's applied.

If it were up to me, the best solution would be to get rid of neighbors :hysterical:

Also probably doesn't help if you have a lot of Amish in the area that don't have to pay taxes to the county.

Thanks for all the reply's. To touch on a few comments.

Amish DO pay property tax so they are entitled to a better dust free road also.

They do not have phones though so calling all the time is not going to be effective for them plus most Amish men are working either in a job during the day and doing all their other work in the afternoons. The woman are not going to call.

Also on calling. There is a secretary there on Monday afternoon and Thursday mornings. That is it. Any other time of the day calls go to voice mail so calling and harassing the township will go to voice mail most of the time. The secretary will relay messages.
There is no local news here. I would need to call a news station from 40 miles away and I highly doubt this would be a news story but who knows?

There is an election coming up. The one person that is running this time besides the elected officials that are on now is a ex meth user and not the best character. Don't think he will do any better.
Amish don't vote and being that there are more Amish [all related] on this road then English are voting power is not the best anyway.

As far as speeding being the issue in causing the dust. No in most cases. Some people do speed but because of the huge tractors that is the issue more so. They are running in low gear. Have had problems with them in the past when running silage and Speeding.

Stopped a couple of them last year and told them flat out if they did not slow down I would drive our tractor up and down the road all day long in low gear and they would not be able to pass. They slowed down.

Roofing nails. They'll slow down..... And by that, I mean hold an old roofing nail box, and toss a handful of gravel in front of a speeding car. Perception.....

Our county sprays an oil solution on the road for a $25 fee.Have you talked to the county engineer?You would want to request that they not grade the road where you spray yourself.

In the county I used to live in the only way one could get their road fixed was to get elected road commissioner.

The state road tax money give to the counties could only be used on certain roads... there wasn't much tax money left.... so the country rd the commissioner lived on was the one that got fixed.

The job rotated a lot :D