(Left) Cracked curbs and and broken asphalt on Woodlawn Street in Groves, looking towards 32nd Street. (Right) Drainage issues at the intersection of Woodlawn Street and Allison Avenue | Photos: Eleanor Skelton and Jennifer Jackson
This article was originally published in The Examiner on March 9, 2017.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
Residents along Allison Avenue and Woodlawn Street in Groves say their streets have been puckered with potholes and drain poorly after years of Southeast Texas rainstorms.
Their neighborhood, built in the late ’50s and early ’60s, is now overgrown with large live oak trees that were just saplings when the houses and roads were originally built.
Taylor Cochran has lived on Allison Avenue since 1994. His family moved into the house when he was a child.
“I was here before they put all this asphalt down. I was in the fourth grade when they did it, and they haven’t redone it since,” he said.
“It’s fun when it rains,” Cochran said. “Pretty much their solution is send trucks out, they get all the old rock out as best as they can and put new down, and then the next thing you know, it rains again and you end up with deeper holes and more holes, and it just all spreads.”
Cochran and his wife, Crystal, said they are having to redo the suspension on her truck a second time due to driving over all the potholes.
“Trying to navigate the road on a motorcycle is horrible,” he added.
They have both called the city about the issue, along with several neighbors and nurses that come to care for their special needs son.
“Generally, all they do is send out more rock,” he said. The city last filled in the potholes about three weeks ago, he added.
The Cochrans said they feel tax dollars are being wasted by “putting a Band-Aid” on the road instead of just repaving.
Yolanda Torres cares for her mother, who also lives on Allison Avenue.
“It’s horrible. I even told my other sister, we pay taxes and everything, y’all need to
call Groves and tell them they need to do something,” Torres said. “They came and they covered it with that gravel; well, guess what, when it rains, the water won’t flow.
“Patching it up ain’t gonna get it,” she said. “It’s never been like that before, it’s just
bad.”
Brian Williams, her neighbor across the street, has lived in his house for 11 years.
“They just filled some in over here, but that disappeared, whatever they put in there,” he said.
The City of Groves plans to repave Allison Avenue this year, along with further improvements in 2018 and 2019, City Manager D.E. Sosa said.
“We repair potholes daily,” he said. “We have a patch truck that runs about just about every day that is not a bad weather day, all over the city.”
The City of Groves’ current plan to improve streets will repair around 18,914 total feet of roadway, Sosa said.
Residents can call any time and report problems, he added.
“We take reports at the warehouse,” he said. “If you call the secretary at the warehouse and report something, she’ll give it to the public works division and they’ll put it on their route.”
Most repairs have to be completed during the summer months, usually between May and July, because the materials have to be used in over 80 degree temperatures.
“If we had known the winter was going to be so mild, we probably could have started a little earlier.”
Sosa explained that the City of Groves’ street program budget should double or triple in the next two years, once the city’s debt service rolls off.
“We will probably be doing two or three times as much streets starting the summer of 2019,” he said.
Street engineers evaluate each road to see if the base of the road is still intact, or if it has been damaged by tree roots.
“It doesn’t do any good to fix streets if the base is bad,” Sosa said. “All those old streets that were built back in the ’60s, they’re all messed up because of the tree roots and the ground shifting.”
“If the base is in good shape, they will go through there and they will go ahead and do some prep and re-rock the entire street and rebuild,” he said. “With the weather here and how much rain we have, we have more streets than we can handle, but we’re trying to do it a little bit at a time.”
Residents on Allison Avenue can expect part of their street to be fixed in 2017, according to the City of Groves’ projections and street plan.
“We’re reconstructing 7,500 feet of Allison from 32nd Street to Bay Street,” Sosa said. “Those big trees have torn all the curbs up.”
The city has formulated a plan for the work and hired a contractor, but the project may take a few years since the curbs also need to be replaced.
“The curbs are going to be a real problem,” he said. “We’re gonna have to go in there and remove the roots.”
He said they would probably pull out the old curbs in 2018.
“If we end up with more money than we thought, then we’ll probably do some more work,” he said. “The curb work is very expensive and to do it right, we’re going to need more than one summer’s budget.”
Sosa is aware of the drainage issues on Allison Avenue and Woodlawn Street, as well. Residents say the run-off from 32nd Street pools toward the far end of Woodlawn and does not dry out between rainstorms.
Further repairs on Woodlawn Street and curb work is probably about two years out, Sosa said, since the city considers Allison to be a higher priority with greater need.
Sosa projected that the curb work on Allison Avenue should be completed by 2019.
Eleanor Skelton 