By Shamar Blunt
A new substance to make roads more durable is to be introduced from as early as next month to fix many of the island’s small village roads, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Transport Dr Romel Springer has told rural residents.
Speaking at Thursday’s St Lucy Parish Speaks town hall meeting, Dr Springer said a polymer will be added to pave many of the smaller roads that connect smaller, close-knit communities in rural areas.
“As early as February, we will see the rollout of a new approach to addressing some of the issues with those small cart roads in rural communities,” he told the forum.
This is a separate project from the government’s $30 million Accelerated Mill and Pave Programme which will focus on repairing highways, he explained.
Dr Springer said: “[We plan to introduce] the use of basically what is a polymer-based solution, where we are going to apply a polymer to the actual earth, to the indigenous materials in those communities, and that earth will become solid like rock.
“Basically what happens is that we will go in, we will level the road, introduce this polymer, and that will harden with a surface that is similar to that of asphalt. This is technology that we would have visited Arizona and discovered when we were over there, which is being used right across Arizona –mainly in trials and roads that do not have high-frequency traffic use.
“We are looking for sometime next month; we were hoping to have it here by this month. We actually have the product here in Barbados, but the persons who are experts in the application of the product cannot be here this month, they will come next month.”
The St Andrew MP did not specify which type of polymer additive will be used. The most common form used in road building in the western American state of Arizona is made by adding polymers to bitumen, the sticky substance that binds asphalt together. Other types of polymer are crack resistant, can withstand high temperatures, or prevent erosion in road construction. Each material has distinct benefits for specific environmental conditions and construction needs.
Also present at the town hall, Prime Minister Mia Mottley turned her attention to water quality issues in the north of the island. She stressed that the administration is still heavily invested in tackling the appearance of brown water in the parish’s taps.
She said: “As soon as the Estimates are finished, I will be having an intense session with the water authority so that we can begin to understand what our immediate priorities will be in terms of expanding the capacity and looking for more resources in order to be able to move at a quicker pace, so that the residents of St Lucy, St Peter, St George, St John [can get relief].”
