The Town of Hearst has taken a different approach to fixing potholes on its streets. Administrator Eric Picard says three years ago the town purchased an asphalt recycler that turns old pavement into a hot mix.
“So instead of using the cold mix and things like that, we can actually patch the holes using actual asphalt,” he siad. “It’s still a band aid. I mean over time, it’ll wear and tear but it will last much longer and the finished product looks much better as well.”
Picard says the machine has already shown a slight benefit on the municipality’s bottom line.
“An example of that is that we did a job internally that would have cost us about $30,000 worth of asphalt,” he said. “But it only costs us a bit of labour and diesel fuel so over time it will be very substantial.”
