NEWRY – At a special selectmen’s meeting Monday afternoon, the board learned just what was under the old Sunday River Access Road: stump dumps.

Not just small piles of woody debris, but large logs and whole stumps, said Sunday River Ski Resort engineer Joseph Aloisio.

“As the road reconstruction project proceeds, the contractor has found a couple of old stump dumps over which 12 inches of gravel was put in and the old road paved on top of that,” Aloisio told selectmen.

Stumps were buried four feet deep at one site. As contractor Steve Swasey of Andover excavated the road, crews found still more stump dumps, Aloisio said.

Woody debris buried underneath roads is not a good thing. As the wood decomposes, it creates a hole into which the road would soon collapse, Aloisio added.

“They pulled up whole stumps and whole logs that had been there since 1986 when the road was built. There were no small branches, just the thick middles of branches. They even found that type of material in the roadbed where the Barker Road swings off and Timberline (Drive), which was the old road,” he said.

All the stumps and logs were removed and the holes filled in with additional gravel, which meant selectmen would have to OK a change order to pay an extra $12,000 to $15,000 over and above the contracted $337,500 summer project.

At town meeting in March, voters agreed to spend up to $384,000 for the work, with $300,000 being taken from surplus to keep the tax rate reasonable.

Removing the piles of woody debris and laying a uniform 18-inch gravel base on the one-mile road also put Swasey behind schedule, Aloisio added.

Prior to approving the change order, Chairman Stephen Wight said he was glad that Swasey took it upon himself to remove all of the stumps and logs, then fill in the holes.

“I don’t think we would have wanted to put a $300,000 road on stumps,” Wight said. “It slowed him down, but I’m impressed by the job he’s doing.”

After the 3-0 vote that conditionally OK’d the extra costs based on learning the correct amount, Aloisio, in response to a local business owner’s questions, said Swasey also removed a double dip in the road.

“It was one of the problems in getting up the hill,” he said.

During the winter, long tour buses would frequently get caught on the double dip. It also created a safety hazard for drivers descending on the road.

And although the road has been torn up, refilled with gravel and topped with recycled pavement, Aloisio said the road’s grade should still come up six inches from its current state as the project progresses.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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