Asphalt costs rising like all the others, but it's a spring essential

Talk about making something everyone wants and needs.

Asphalt manufacturers will be in huge demand this spring. What will be even bigger is the price of their goods.

Asphalt is concrete, sand and rock that's put together with a petroleum-based mix and used to resurface roads.

After this long cold, wet, snowy winter a lot of it is needed to smooth out what moisture and road salt have crumbled.

But, before that magic mixture can meet the pavement, a few things have to happen.

First, the plants, such as Orange Crush -- which operates in East Dundee, Hinsdale and Romeoville -- have to open for the season. Second, the materials have to be put together and heated. Third, village and county highway department officials that need it have to determine where they are going to use it and how they will pay for it.

Don't look for a price in this story, because Mark Tubay is hesitant to give one.

He's the general superintendent of Orange Crush. With the cost of everything oil touches increasing every day, the numbers he gives today could be wrong tomorrow, he said.

Last year's asking price was $55-$60 a ton, said Larry Braasch, Dundee Township highway commissioner. In March, it was $72 a ton.

"It's so unpredictable," Tubay said. "All I know is it will be more than last year at this time."

But that's not going to stop villages like West Dundee from buying hot asphalt and using it on a portion of pothole-riddled Huntley Road, or many streets east of Route 31.

East Dundee won't be buying as much this spring, said T.J. Moore, public works director. The roads that need work will be repaved later in the year.

Street crews in other Northern Illinois communities were waiting for asphalt plants to open this month so they could begin work.

Some plants opened two weeks ago. Orange Crush's East Dundee facility was supposed to open last week.

It won't be long before street crews line up at the doors to fill their trucks with the essential but costly solution.

"(Fixing the streets) is something that has to be done," said Larry Keller, West Dundee village president. "We already know we're going to be paying more, but it seems everything is going up these days."

Even though the solution will be costly, it won't be temporary, said Richard Babica, who heads the West Dundee public works department.

The nice thing about spring is, hot asphalt can be put in the holes in the road. In winter, a cold mix is used to fill in the holes. But that doesn't stay long. Road salt, moisture and steel snowplow blades loosen it.

Still, public works crews from Dundee Township, East and West Dundee and Carpentersville put it in cracks and holes to make the roads as safe as possible in the middle of February.

Months later, they'll be looking for ways to fill the holes in their budget created by the more expensive asphalt.