City crews working overtime to fix potholes in the wake of snowstorm

If you’ve noticed some rough roads and more potholes around town, you aren’t alone. While the snow may be gone from the Borderland for now, the effects from the winter storms so far this season are sticking around.

El Paso roads are showing the wear from the start of our relatively wet winter: gaps, splits and potholes. The extra precipitation is also straining the city’s streets department maintenance crews.

“I’d say, on a weekly basis, it’s about 300 potholes a week,” said Chris Forti, the streets and maintenance department operations supervisor on the West Side.

300 is the usual average a week, but with a lot more calls than usual coming in, Forti said the ten road patching crews spread throughout the city have been working 50 hour weeks to catch up.

“Water is not good with asphalt,” Forti said. “Water gets under the street, into the cracks, and deteriorates the asphalt pretty quickly.”

Weather in general takes its toll on roadways, but the eight inches of snow in December and subsequent rainfall soaked many roads in the El Paso area.

A major challenge of pothole repair is once the dirt underneath a road is damaged, it can be more prone to problems in the future. That means once an area is patched, it could still require more repairs in the future.

“We do try to get to them as soon as possible, but we do prioritize,” Forti said. “High speed arterial streets, we try to get to those as soon as possible.”

A streets department spokeswoman said that the city has considered other materials like rubberized asphalt or concrete for the roads, but that “asphalt is the optimal product for our climate and infrastructure. It is also the most cost-effective product.”

The city streets department reviews all service requests. To report a problem, call the city at 3-1-1.