After being confronted with continued community outrage, Caltrans is speeding up its plan to fix a chip sealing project gone bad in the Middletown area at a cost of millions.

Caltrans announced Thursday that next summer it would repave a 12-mile stretch of Highway 29 from the Lake County line north to Hidden Valley in addition to an 8.5-mile stretch of Highway 175 from Middletown to Cobb. Last month, after public complaints started pouring in about the roughness of the roads, Caltrans pledged to repave Highway 175 next summer and Highway 29 “in the near future.”

But Caltrans spokesman Phil Frisbie Jr. said officials since then were able to find funding for Highway 29 so that the work could be done next summer.

In the meantime, Frisbie said, Caltrans plans by mid-November to smooth parts of Highway 29 near Twin Pines Casino and Butts Canyon Road. He said engineers hadn’t decided how to smooth the the pavement, possibly by grinding it down or using a filler material to patch the minor rutting that the chip sealing seemed to magnify.

He said loose rock that collected in the highway’s centerline rumble strip has been removed with vacuum sweepers.

The chip sealing projects, which cost a total of $2.1 million for both highways, apparently went astray when Caltrans, in a departure from its usual practice, had its contractor use half-inch rock rather than the typical three-eighths-inch rock. Chip sealing involves a process that includes a layer of tar-like petroleum mixed with finely ground aggregate.

But the bigger rock made the two highways a much rougher ride than Caltrans expected and launched the public outcry.

Frisbie has estimated the cost to repave Highway 175 at about $3.825 million and the Highway 29 stretch at about $5.4 million.

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