WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 2015
AUSTIN, TEXAS
May's heavy rains are creating a flood of potholes.
New ones are forming and old ones are getting bigger.
The growing problem has the City of Austin getting a deluge
of 3-1-1 calls to come fix city streets.
The Taylor Harrison the timing couldn't have been worse.
"Literally the day I moved here everything was under water," said
Harrison.
The skies opened and smacked Austin with the wettest May on
record. "Mother Nature is a rager," said Harrison.
Three weeks ago she moved to the edge of Pease Park. Closer
to Shoal Creek, the flood damage is piled high on the curb. But head up
Kingsbury Street, where water crept into every crack and crevice, and Harrison
is dealing with deep damage.
"I call them axle breakers," said Harrison.
"They used to be sort of ruts down there and now they're just like scoops
out of the road." The heavy rains created several new potholes on
Kingsbury Street that are bigger than an extra-large pizza. Drivers try to
avoid them, but when they can't the road gets rocky.
To level it out, city crews have used more asphalt mix this
year than in all of 2014. "It's just magnified," said Mike Collier, a
supervisor with the city's Street and Bridge Operation.
During the last fiscal year, that ran from October 1, 2013
to September 30, 2014, the city got 1264 requests to fill potholes. So far this
fiscal year that number has almost doubled to 2490. "I think we got hit
pretty evenly all the way across town," said Collier. Road conditions are
anything but typical.
On a normal day Austin's street repair crews get 20 to 30
pothole calls. "When the storm came in we received about six times as many
as that," said Collier.
Potholes are popping up everywhere. For Taylor Harrison, the
rains turned her street into an obstacle course. "I try to avoid them, but
sometimes it's hard," said Harrison.
City crews are hoping to smooth out the rest of Austin's
flood damage over the summer.