Sections of $148M Eccles access road sinking

- weight limits needed to protect roads, says engineer Willis

Many sections of the newly-constructed Eccles, East Bank Demerara access road leading to the Haags Bosch waste management facility have been gradually sliding into the two parallel trenches as the weight of laden dump trucks and other heavy vehicles take their toll.

The road was constructed at a cost of $148 million by the H Nauth and Son contracting firm.

A section of the damaged road

Drivers find their vehicles leaning heavily to either side of the road and risk sliding into the waiting trenches.

One observer in the construction industry said that it is unlikely that the contractor that built the road allowed the foundation to be worked up or settled before applying bitumen to the surface. He said that the road should have been built and left un-asphalted for a significant period before being surface-treated with asphalt. Doing so would have allowed the road to be properly compacted, thereby averting the current situation.

The observer expressed surprise that the southern half of the road seemed to be sinking faster than the northern half, given that it is the latter half that is used by laden dump trucks and other heavy laden vehicles on their way into the industrial site and the Haags Bosch site.

Contacted for a comment, government engineer Walter Willis said the situation is being looked at with the aim of having it rectified. He said it has been recognized that in some sections, the road is sinking towards the trenches on either side.

Willis explained that the road, in its early stages, was only suitable for single-lane traffic because of its narrowness. He added that it was necessary for the road to be double-laned because of the fact that trucks would have been using it to access the new waste management facility.

To make the road two-laned, Willis explained, it had to be widened and this meant that it was not firm enough given the proximity of the trenches. “The embankment was too narrow for two-laned traffic and this caused the slippage,” he said.

But, he added that the weakening of the road is not restricted to the newer portion, which begins at the entrance to the Industrial Site, Eccles.

He said that at least three sections of the old road–from the East Bank Public Road to the entrance of the Industrial Site–have similar stress marks.

He blamed this on the weightiness of the vehicles that use the road and the increase in traffic because of the new housing developments. As a result, he said, the government must move to enforce weight limits and restrictions in order to protect the roads from such damage.

In May 2009, government announced that the $148 million contract for the construction of the access road to the Haags Bosch landfill site had been awarded to H Nauth and Sons contracting firm.

The project was part of a US$18 million loan agreement between the government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the construction of the Haags Bosch landfill and fell under Component Three of the six-component programme. H Nauth was the successful bidder out of 11 companies that submitted bids. The contract had a five-month duration and a defects liability period of one year.