Photo by Graham Cullen Steve Stottlemyer, left, hands Greg Young, a stonemason with Frederick County Highways, a stone to be used in the opening of a culvert on Poffenberger Road in Jefferson. Poffenberger Road is among the 61 remaining gravel roads in Frederick County and is part of a Division of Public Works driving surface study.

Susan Hanson's house and pottery studio and gallery are on Poffenberger Road, one of the county's remaining gravel roads.

She has a number of reasons for wanting to maintain the gravel roads, one of which is safety.

"I want to keep (Poffenberger Road) gravel because people tear down this road," she said. "If it were paved, they would just go faster."

The speed limit on Poffenberger is 25 mph.

"It's important to keep it gravel for safety, in my book, and many of the other property owners' on this road."

Poffenberger Road is serving as Frederick County Division of Public Works' guinea pig, as the Highways and Transportation department continues its Driving Surface Aggregate demonstration project.

The DSA project will determine if gravel road construction and maintenance techniques developed by a Pennsylvania group can reduce costs, said David Olney, public works project manager.

"These materials and techniques have never been used on a Frederick County gravel road to the extent that they are recommended by the Center for Dirt and Gravel Roads Studies," Olney said.

The experiment on Poffenberger Road, between the intersection with Carroll Boyer Road and the bridge over Lewis Mill Branch, has divided the gravel portion of the road into three segments of different surface types.

One section has been reconstructed using the center's recommended methods and materials; the two remaining portions are asphalt and tar and chip. The project area is almost exactly a mile long, Olney said.

Public works officials will compare the long-term maintenance costs of the three segments to determine whether there are cost savings associated with the use of DSA, a specialized mix of crushed stone.

"We're looking for a long-term savings," Olney said. "That's what we're hoping for."

The project is part of the County's Capital Improvement Project program for fiscal 2009, Olney said. The project budget was $150,000.

The design and permitting process began in August 2008. The construction phase began last winter, with drainage improvements and pipe replacements. The DSA was placed at the end of June and beginning of July, with some reclamation work completed in October.

As of mid-November, all road work is complete, except for some remaining headwalls and endwalls on the drainage pipes, which should be completed later this month, Olney said.

County staff members will monitor the road for the next three years, to get a clear picture of how the DSA compares to standard gravel.

Olney said they will be looking for surface problems, such as rutting, washboarding, potholes, raveling of the loose stones or drainage problems.

"Typically, on gravel roads, you find that those sort of surface distresses just appear in a very short period of time," he said. "We typically touch them up in the spring and once again in the fall. If we skipped a year, oh, heaven help you if you don't have a four-wheel-drive vehicle."

Barry Lucey said initial figures regarding the road won't look quite as good, "because this was a learning process."

Lucey, chairman of the Frederick County Roads Board, said future plans for DSA usage would work out a little differently. "We did some things that took a little longer than it might (otherwise) have," he said.

Olney said another project like this would probably be planned for any season but the summer, partly because of machinery availability and weather conditions. DSA is not temperature-sensitive like asphalt.

The gravel road is prepared by applying the aggregate's fine particles while wet, then rolling them to compress the road.

She said the theory being tested is that the DSA road is just as durable as tar and chip, without the chemicals and asphalt, which is bad for nearby streams.

In an effort to keep water from building up on the gravel road, the county has added new plastic pipes. The pipes allow water to move faster than it would through a corrugated metal pipe.

"Unfortunately, gravel roads are water-soluble," Olney said. "The fines are what hold it together, and the fines can get rinsed off, so you want to keep the water away as much as possible."

Because of the higher velocity, sediment, stones and sticks are supposed to be flushed right through, Olney said.

"I don't look at this as a culmination of all our efforts going back (10) years," Lucey said.

"I look at this as one more step in the process of keeping our roads in the county," he said. Lucey said he hopes to incorporate this process into the rest of the county roads.

Hanson said her effort is a consequence of a combination of things. "When I first got interested in this, this road was on a list to be paved."

She created a petition for residents to sign in opposition of paving the road. More than 300 people signed it.

"It was such a diverse group," Hanson said. "Developers, no-growthers, Republicans, Democrats, young, old. It was just for different reasons, all of them."

Some signed for the history and nostalgia of driving down the road. Others signed for safety reasons, and still others for environmental reasons.

"It really opened my eyes, because I thought it would just be kind of one group of people," Hanson said. "But I was pleasantly surprised."

Frederick County has 61 gravel roads remaining, all of which are in the Rural Roads program. Some of the roads and road segments in the program are surfaced with tar and chip or asphalt, Olney said.

"Rather than historic preservation, this is a good case of aesthetic preservation," Lucey said.

Hanson said the road is also used as a linear park, walking dogs, jogging and riding bikes.

The first official report card regarding the road will be given to the Frederick County Commissioners in July, Olney said.

"This is the last little bit of country," Lucey said.

"I think it looks super. From the visual, aesthetic standpoint, it seems to me it's exactly what we were looking for."