Road reconstruction halted after one day

By TOM KANE

DAMASCUS, NY — The Atco Road reconstruction project is like an albatross around the collective necks of the Damascus Township supervisors, especially Stan Kuta.

Kuta is the supervisor/roadmaster who is responsible for the road.

The reconstruction of 1.7 miles of the road that town officials say was bungled by the Suit Kote Company of Cortland, NY in 1997 was supposed to begin again this past Monday, August 18.

After one day of work, an engineer hired by the township closed down the project.

“The company is not using the right equipment to grade the road properly,” said Jamie Boy of Materials Testing Laboratory of Edison, NJ.

Boy pointed out a number of places along the road surface that were not evenly graded.

“This is going to have to be redone,” he said.

Boy was satisfied with what he called the compaction—the undersurface of the roadbed.

“What they didn’t do was mix enough emulsion with the reground material they laid down and they did not use their special grader,” he said.

“The township made the mistake of using the town grader and not insisting that the company provide theirs,” said Atco Road resident Rolf Beck. “The company now can say that they weren’t responsible for the poor leveling of the road.”

After the township brought a civil lawsuit against the company in 2001, it looked like an agreement might happen.

“This has cost the town over $100,000 plus the time put on it by township workers,” Kuta said.

Suit Kote officials could not be reached for comment by press time.