This post is written by Meredith Town Board Member, Rachel Polens.

Roads are expensive.  Regular maintenance of Meredith’s 81 miles of town roads accounts for nearly 80% of our entire town budget each year. If only one mile of town road became so damaged that it needed to be reconstructed, the cost to Meredith taxpayers could be catastrophic.

According to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), the cost to repair damaged pavement on local roads varies from $70,000 to $150,000 per lane mile for low-level maintenance such as a single course overlay. For full-depth reconstruction the cost ranges from $500,000 to $1.9 million per lane mile. In other words, full-depth reconstruction of both lanes of a single mile of a town road could cost town taxpayers as much as $3.8 million dollars!

To this end, I am pleased to be a member of a town board that is writing a law to protect the town roads, our largest asset. The proposed law establishes a mechanism by which any entity responsible for causing damage to our roads by unusually heavy traffic—referred to in the law as “concentrated traffic”–will be made to pay for the damage they caused.  It ensures that the cost will not fall on Meredith taxpayers. In other words, “You break it, you pay.”

Damage to roads can come from many forms of high impact commercial endeavors including construction of super stores, warehouse hubs, industrial wind facilities and natural gas infrastructure projects, to name a few. The proposed law can be thought of as a form of “catastrophic” insurance coverage for our roads. It does not apply to normal baseline traffic, which has already been calculated by Delta Engineers, the road experts retained by the town.  It does not apply to any farming activities or ordinary trucking activity.

The proposed law uses recognized engineering standards to quantify the damage. It incorporates a 17-page Road Use Agreement (RUA), which is a negotiated contract between the town and the developer.  Some of the topics included in the contract are developer responsibilities, bonding, insurance and indemnification.

If developers wish to use our town roads, the proposed law requires they submit a Haul Route Notification Form (HRNF), which the town Highway Superintendent will use to calculate if “concentrated traffic” will occur.

This form, in addition to requiring a town highway map showing which roads would be used, requires lists of:

1. All town, state, and federal permits required for the project
2. Traffic source identification (e.g., where materials for the project will come from)
3. The number of vehicles by weight class

The HRNF is then analyzed by the town Highway Superintendent to determine if the number of Equivalent Single Axle Loads (ESAL) will exceed the set Minimum Impact Threshold (MIT) and will thereby damage the roads. If the MIT is not met, and a determination is made by the Highway Superintendent that the traffic will not constitute concentrated traffic, the applicant will face no further requirements under this law.

If it is determined that the roads will be harmed, the developer can either change the haul route or pay a $15,000 escrow fee and enter into a Road Use Agreement (RUA) with the town.

Once the Highway Superintendent and Delta Engineers determine the amount of actual damage expected to occur, the developer will be required to guarantee payment for repairs, using either a performance bond or an irrevocable letter of credit for an amount not less than $500,000.  From this point on, all payments to the engineering firm are the responsibility of the developer, not the town.

In 2010, our Town Board budgeted $8,500 for Delta Engineering’s “Road Protection Program.” They were spurred by the possibility of high volume hydrofracking and the heavy truck traffic accompanying it. (The NYSDOT estimates that a single heavy truck can have the equivalent effect of 9,000 cars.)

In 2015, the Town Board voted to spend the previously allocated funds and start working with Delta. The triggers were proposals for two separate 30” high-pressure natural gas pipelines–the Constitution and the North East Energy Direct (NED)–located within a half mile of Meredith’s borders. The Constitution Pipeline maps of proposed traffic routes mark the following six Meredith roads as truck routes: Coe Hill Road, Houghtaling Hollow, Monkey Run, Mcdougal Road, Rathbun Hill, and Sheehan Road.

In June of 2015, Delta Engineers completed an 87-page report detailing current road conditions to serve as a starting point from which to measure potential future road damage. At the end of September, Delta Engineers conducted a joint training session in the Town of Davenport attended by seven officials from our town: Code Enforcement Officer Al Brown, Highway Superintendent Jason Noble, Deputy Highway Superintendent Darrell Gesell, Town Supervisor James Ellis, and Board members Danny Birnbaum, Ron Bailey and myself.

Delta is being paid a one-time fee of approximately $7,000. This amount is $1,500 less than the original allocation for two reasons:

1. Delta was able to use existing Meredith statistics from a road condition survey compiled by the Delaware County Planning Department in 2010.
2. Delta was able to train personnel from two towns—Meredith and Davenport—at the same time.

The law firm of Coughlin & Gerhart was paid $1,500 to write both the Road Preservation Law (RUL) and the Road Use Agreement (RUA). The firm’s Cheryl Sacco studied Delta’s engineering reports and their road use manual in order to coordinate them with Meredith’s proposed RUL and RUA.  To read the entire draft law and view documents related to the law, go to <townofmeredith.com>.

This is taxpayer money well spent. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. It would be reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect our largest asset.