A familiar sight to local drivers, potholes pockmarked local roadways on Monday, including Quarrier Street in downtown Charleston.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Take two weeks of ice and snow, some freezing and thawing, add some 16-ton snowplows and thousands of pounds of salt on heavily traveled roads, and you’ve got a recipe for a bumper crop of potholes.
And state and local officials can’t do much about them at the moment.
“We can’t do any permanent fixes for probably another month,” said Carrie Bly, spokeswoman for the state Division of Highways.
As anyone who has to deal with road repairs is painfully aware, plants that make asphalt don’t operate during the winter months, and aren’t expected to reopen until at least mid-March, Bly and other local officials said. That leaves highway repair crews stuck trying to repair potholes with cold patch, a mixture of tar and gravel that is at best a temporary fix.
“[Cold patch] could last a month, or it could last a day,” Bly said. “And winter’s not over. If it snows again, the plows are just going to dig it up.”
South Charleston Public Works Director Gerald Burgy and other local officials said Monday they were still trying to clear the streets from snow, freezing rain and ice that blanketed much of the state over the weekend. Burgy said the city’s 20 tons of cold patch will have to wait until the streets are a little clearer.
“As soon as the snow is gone we’ll be patching…