Western Emulsions and PASS featured in Public Works Magazine Article

his article appeared in the February Issue of Public Works Magazine:

Creativity Results in Cost Effective Street Preservation

By Terry L. Hagen, Director of Public Works/City Engineer, City of Indio, and Bob Koleas, Vice-President, Western Emulsions Inc.

The familiar saying "it's never too late" certainly applies to the City of Indio's street infrastructure. After more than seven decades as a city, Indio and its Public Works department have implemented a historical citywide street rehabilitation program called "the Road to the Future." The program benefits arterial streets as well as those within residential neighborhoods, many of which have received no maintenance since their original construction. Western Emulsions Inc. and its PASS¨ asphalt emulsion are now playing a significant role in the transformation of the city's infrastructure.
Not unlike the rest of California's Coachella Valley, Indio has experienced modest growth in its 72 years, receiving its share of residential, retail and commercial development and construction. However, road maintenance historically did not receive sufficient funding or attention, particularly within the city's residential neighborhoods.

And the low desert climatic conditions, with average temperatures ranging from 39 to 107 degrees Fahrenheit during the year, only further punished the cracked and worn asphalt roadways in the city. These factors together left many of the city's roads with severe alligatoring, large block-cracking, and uplifting of the pavement surrounding major cracks due to constant expansion and contraction, as well as the invasion of moisture into the road base.

In 2001, at a time marked by new leadership in Indio's City Council and at the administrative level of government, the Public Works department was empowered to prioritize infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation. Public outreach indicated that Indio residents strongly agreed that the city should maintain a high quality roadway system.

New, but limited, funding became available for street maintenance when the City established a Water Authority to lease the city's water system, generating lease revenues to the General Fund. Although this revenue source created new opportunity for implementing infrastructure improvements, funds were insufficient to implement any large-scale rehabilitation program based on demolition and repaving, especially during a period of high construction costs.

Western Emulsions Inc., a California-based asphalt emulsion manufacturer and maintenance contractor, asked Indio to consider an alternative strategy for revitalizing its roads that would enable the city to reap the benefits of revitalized streets at a small fraction of the cost of removing and replacing the asphalt.

Through it's own engineering and research, the company in the 1980's developed a patented polymer-modified asphalt emulsion known as PASS. Since then, Western Emulsions has implemented a variety of successful street maintenance projects using PASS along with its other products for cities and counties and state highways throughout California, Nevada and Arizona throughout the late-1980's and 1990's.

Rather than removing the severely cracked and alligatored pavement, Western Emulsions proposed applying its PASS product combined with small 3/8" chips (commonly called a "chip-seal") directly over the old pavement to fill and smooth the existing cracks.

Because PASS exhibits a uniquely superior ability to retain the aggregate used in the chip-seal process and forms a rejuvenating chemical bond with the existing asphalt, it effectively seals old cracks from moisture and reverses deterioration of the roadway.

PASS' forgiving chemistry also prevents major cracks from reappearing due to expansion and contraction at various temperatures. Western recommended following the PASS chip-seal with an overlay of slurry seal to impart a traditional smooth, black appearance to the Indio streets.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of its product, the company volunteered to test its PASS product on one of the City's most deteriorated streets at no cost. After nearly a year of evaluating the results of the test section, Indio awarded Western Emulsions a contract to improve 23 streets within two residential neighborhoods.

Indio purchased its own grinding and crack-sealer machine to further smooth the deteriorated pavement prior to the chip seal application, and the company's first project for the city was completed with excellent results in early November 2001 (see photos).

During that same month, the city awarded Western Emulsions a second contract to implement PASS chip-seals on a second phase of 27 streets.
During the fall of 2001, Western Emulsions improved those first 50 residential streets in Indio for under $400,000, or about 30 cents per square foot, inclusive of all labor and materials. Once repaired with PASS, the only recommended maintenance is a reapplication of slurry after three to five years to restore the black appearance to the roadway.

Western Emulsions' chip-seal process now represents the heart of Indio's street rehabilitation program. Indio's 2002 road maintenance schedule calls for several additional phases of work using PASS chip-seals followed by slurry overlays.

The city estimates a street rehabilitation program involving asphalt removal and replacement (R&R) on a comparable scale would have cost 10 times what it is able to achieve using PASS, far outstripping the funding available.