Kennewick's Street Improvement Fiasco

In the hope that some expert advice might help them out of the street building tangle, the city council and contractor W. A. Morain last week sent for J. W. McCaw, engineer of Whitman County, who has had considerable experience in building oil-bound macadam roads. The engineer came Tuesday and, after thoroughly investigating the streets now being constructed and the materials that have been used, met with the council yesterday evening. It was evident from his advice that he regarded remodeling the improvement already made as no small task. He said it had been a big mistake to put dirt and fine sand on the oiled gravel; this had coated the gravel and destroyed the adhesive properties of the oil. As a remedy, he suggested that the street be swept clean of the loose dirt and sand and more oil applied with a surface dressing of screenings or very coarse sand. The chief fault he attributed to the specifications, which provided for too much gravel and too little oil, and that oil of too small a percentage of asphaltum. Experiments will now be made on the macadam that is already down in the hope that the earlier mistakes may be corrected without tearing out the work and starting all over again.