BUTTE — It’s that time of year in Butte when the city streets are plagued with the dreaded potholes and city crews have been at it for the past month trying to fill as many of them as they can, but there are many factors that work against them.
“I’ve had a long, hard winter. We usually can get out there and fill potholes periodically, you know, throughout November, December, January but we’ve been getting snow since December and it hasn’t really let up,” said pothole-filling crew member Justin Rowling.
A pair of two-member crews has been filling potholes with a mix of hot oil and gravel in recent weeks.
“This year’s been a little difficult to stay on top of. We get quite a few claims, you know, people breaking their tires and stuff like that,” said Rowling.
Filing potholes is a weather-dependent task.
“Previously, we had ice in the holes and the oil doesn’t like to stick for that, so we have to get all the ice out, all the water out in order for the holes to stay filled or else they blow out once we get done filling them,” he said.
Some streets take longer than others like the intersection at Paxson and Longfellow, which cratered like the surface of the moon.
“Specifically, this street is pretty bad—it’s always been bad every winter, it just gets terrible. Hopefully, they can do something to mend it,” said local resident Tony Mazzola.
People can alert the city about potholes by going to the Butte-Silver Bow website's Report a Pothole page and filling out the online form. Crews say this year is very busy, so it could take a while before a pothole is filled.
“You just got to keep trucking and you know, we can only fill so much throughout the day. We’re working 10-hour days and once we empty out tank, we go fill up and we come right back out and continue to fill ‘em up,” said Rowling.
