Best Practice Road Construction in a Saline Environment

Some of Councils roads in the lower discharge areas of town suffer continuous damage from the high water table. In previous years Council has repaired the roads by simply resurfacing them, only to have the damage recur in a very short period.

A project to develop a suitable treatment to alleviate the detrimental effects and protect council’s infrastructure was carried out in 2007 which involved a pavement design specific to this particular environment. The installation of subsurface drainage under the road pavement in these areas has helped remove this excess water and the addition of water repellant stabilizing material added to the pavement will help prevent surface deformations. Combined with this was the addition of new kerb and gutter which replaced old, broken and poorly graded guttering which also contributed to the high water table. Both surface and sub surface drains now discharge to newly constructed stormwater drains described below.