Paved with good intentions: Plaquemines highway comes full circle with Barriere job
A roller moves along the Belle Chasse Highway construction site. Barriere Construction paved the original stretch of roadway in 1981. (Photo by Angelle Bergeron)
“The Belle Chasse Highway (Highway 23) is the sole vehicle transportation route to the Venice, (La.,) oil terminals and for citizen access and evacuation,” said David Mayer, Barriere’s manager of business development. “Keeping this route open in easy times and in emergency periods is extremely important.”
Barriere constructed the original stretch of highway in 1981. The following year, the project won the Sheldon G. Hayes Award, the “highest honor and most coveted prize for the annual pursuit of the best asphalt paving project in America,” Mayer said.
To qualify for the award, projects must use more than 50,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt, said Chuck MacDonald, director of communications for the National Asphalt Pavement Association. Before even being considered, a project must have already garnered a Quality in Construction award, which is determined by numerical scores given by pavement engineers at the National Center for Asphalt Technology at Auburn University in Alabama for meeting specifications and density.
“Recently, when we competed for and were awarded a mill and overlay project from the DOTD, we realized it was the same site we had built over a quarter of a century ago,” Mayer said. “This is the first time funds have been expended on the highway since our work back in the early ’80s.”
The roadway’s longevity is a testament to its durability, smoothness and the asphalt’s affordable life-cycle cost.
“Another great advantage of building a hot-mix asphalt roadway is that the highway can be readily rehabilitated after all this time without the expense or delay of removing the existing highway,” Mayer said.
The contractor cold planed or milled, the roadway to a 1 3/4-inch depth to account for settling and sloping, and then overlaid the travel lanes and shoulders with a 1-inch wearing course of HMA, said Nelson Capote, DOTD’s project engineer. The Superpave, HMA mix design meets the DOTD’s current specifications for state routes, Capote said. “I think the public will enjoy the results.”
The removed asphalt was either reused for aggregate surface areas or recycled back into more asphalt, Mayer said.
“Liquid Asphalt is a Louisiana product, and the HMA itself is produced here in Louisiana by Barriere,” he said.
Barriere has one of the newest and largest HMA facilities in the state, Mayer said. The company’s Boutte plant has a capacity of 300 to 400 tons per hour.
About 9,400 vehicles on average travel Highway 23 daily, with that number expected to increase to 11,200 by 2018, Capote said. An estimated 13 percent of the current number is truck traffic.
The road endured more than 26 years with no maintenance, in spite of weather, subsidence and the heavy traffic that flows back and forth from the oil fields, Mayer said.
The road was due for routine maintenance in 2005, but Hurricane Katrina delayed project letting, said Bruce Perdue, assistant district administrator of engineering for the DOTD.
“Water gets into the openings and cracks of the asphalt,” said Perdue, who was the field engineer on the original, award-winning project. “We like to think our inspection helped the longevity of the project, too,” Perdue said.
Perdue remembers another job about the same time, on U.S. Highway 61 in St. Charles Parish, which was also constructed using full-depth asphalt, which is asphalt over a sand bed with no limestone.
“It was typically used at that time for new construction,” Perdue said.
Barriere originally constructed the road using 14 inches of hot-mix asphalt over a sand bed.
“In those days, there was no limestone in Louisiana. If people used anything, it was clam shells dredged out of Lake Pontchartrain.”
Barriere began work on the 85-day contract March 20 but experienced delays on delivery of the stone aggregate coming from Arkansas, said Jim Breland, project manager.
“With the Mississippi River levels high, we couldn’t get the barge in,” he said.
The contractor used 48 to 50 trucks per day, traveling from Boutte to the site to deliver the requisite 39,000 tons of asphalt. At that amount, the current project won’t qualify for the Sheldon G. Hayes award, but long-term employees say revisiting the project has been reward enough.
“I was a foreman on the job, driving a red pickup truck like most of the guys down there,” said Bert A. Wilson, who owns Barriere with brothers Peter and George. “My grandfather started the company. This is pretty much what I wanted to do my whole life. We certainly did our best on that project, had to, to win the Sheldon Hayes.”
Breland, like many others at Barriere, is a second-generation employee.
The superintendent on the recent overlay project is James Fulton, who back in 1981 operated a screed — the piece of equipment that applies the paving — and has advanced in position and knowledge through the years.
He pointed out a plate with hot coals that he created to place on the over-the-screed ski — the piece of the screed that gauges whether the new roadway is level — to ensure an ultra-smooth surface.
“Smoothness is what we get paid for,” he said.
“We call it the Fulton over-the-screed-ski,” Mayer said. “It makes a hell of a cheeseburger, too.”
Fulton laughed while recalling a drive through Alabama with his wife, when he spied an asphalt job where he saw the invention. “I pulled over to get a closer look and she was saying, get back in this car,” he said.
Many other things have changed since Barriere first laid that stretch of Highway 23. Materials, the way they are mixed and applied, additives, specifications, technology, equipment, incentives and disincentives have all changed, Fulton said.
However, the employees of Barriere take pride in the fact their award-winning project has lasted so long and see it as a symbol of their company’s expertise, longevity and reliability.
“These employees who built and worked on the original project 26 years ago and are still with us are more experienced now, as we all are,” Mayer said. “We are very proud of the work they have done and feel this accomplishment is evidence that Barriere is a great place to work, to build a future, serve the traveling public and bring Louisiana to the forefront of safe, high-quality transportation efforts.”
