The cleanest of it will be used again; the dirtiest will be buried

Now that the ice and snow storm is over, a city sweeper is out vacuuming up gravel from Albany streets with the plan to sell or reuse as much of it as possible.

About 170 cubic yards of quarter-inch gravel was spread on the city’s streets over the past two weeks, said Mike Wolski, the city’s assistant public works director and operations manager.

“We looked at the first load the sweeper brought in, and the gravel was really dirty,” he said. “We couldn’t reuse it because it was so contaminated with dirt, grease and oil from cars and trucks. Putting that back down could create a possible public health issue.”

The city hopes to sell the cleaner gravel back to the Knife River plant on Highway 34 just east of Corvallis. Staff plans to contact Knife River to see if such an arrangement can be worked out.

Wolski said it may be possible to return the contaminated gravel to the plant as well.

“Knife River might be able to buy that back to use in making its asphalt,” he said. “The asphalt-making process requires heat, so maybe the contaminants could be burned off.”

The city will retain a pile of gravel for emergencies.

The street sweeper sucks up the gravel and takes it first to the city’s operations site on Waverly Drive Northeast. Currently, gravel too dirty to use then is taken to a dump site on Spring Hill Drive, where it is buried, Wolski said. The city also takes dirt and excavation materials to the same place.

City crews spread gravel on many Albany streets and some state highways, Wolski said. City workers also sanded the Lyon and Ellsworth street bridges.

Despite the recent storm, Albany streets are in pretty good shape with one exception, he said.

“We have an issue on Waverly Drive,” Wolski said. “It looks like a bomber strafed the road between Queen Avenue and Grand Prairie Drive.”

The city tried to patch the road, “but we didn’t get the kind of asphalt we wanted so it didn’t work out real well. We are going to try again with something else,” he said.