Packin' It In

FTLComm - Tisdale - Wednesday, August 15, 2001

Each dump truck empties its load in the middle of the excavated area, then the front end loader spreads the material and it is immediately packed. The engineer required that this be the method to fill the area from which the contaminated fuel ladden soil has been removed across from the town office. The specifications are six inches of fill laid down then packed. This makes for a slow process especially since the size of the work site is so large. It was originally thought that just skimming a few inches of access soil from the new lots in the Newmarket subdivision would provide enough material but the dry topsoil was just not going to compact properly and so a large excavation has taken place as subsoil is set asside and clay is being dug from the site which will then be filled in with the subsoil and top soil, although there are some concerns about volume. This is one of those situations where it seemed like a simple solution at the time but as things moved on and the hole got larger the original solution had to be modified.