In sunny Arizona, the Colorado Rockies are preparing for what could be another frustrating baseball season.
Here in weather-beaten Colorado, drivers are dealing with another frustration — pothole season.
“We can’t keep up,” said Joe Obrecht, senior assistant manager at a Discount Tire store in Parker. “At this time of year, when you’ve had the freezing and melting and freezing and melting, the holes just get bigger and bigger and more and more cars come in with damage.”
Those spring training-like temperatures seen early last month? Combine them with the cold and record-setting snowfall that has occurred in the past couple of weeks, and you have a perfect storm for potholes.
How perfect?
“So far this year, we’ve repaired more than 10,000 potholes. By comparison, at this time last year, we had done about 6,000,” said Heather Burke of the Denver Department of Public Works.
She said her agency works weekdays, but last weekend paid overtime so crews could fill 600 potholes.
Emily Wilfong, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, said the deluge of potholes started earlier than usual this year.
CDOT crews, which are responsible for work on highways across the state, have been just as busy as those in Denver, but Wilfong said the department doesn’t keep track of exact numbers, in part because repair work often is done in conjunction with other jobs or by contractors who are responsible for filling potholes while they work on their particular projects.
Wilfong said early-onset potholes need repeated attention.
“Because it’s still winter, and the asphalt temperatures aren’t high enough, the hot mix that we usually use isn’t available to us,” she said. “That means that a lot of the repairs we’re doing are only temporary and we’ll have to revisit them later.”
So, Obrecht and others probably will be busier than a vendor peddling sunscreen to all those visitors to Arizona.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of tires and wheels,” he said. “And when one tire gets popped, you’re probably talking about hundreds of dollars.
“It’s tough for the drivers, but in some ways it’s bad for us too, because we have free tire replacement. So this season has really been eating into our inventory.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292, acotton@denverpost.com or anthonycottondp
See a pothole? You can report it
Denver drivers who locate potholes can call 311 to report them.
Heather Burke of the Department of Public Works said crews will fill them within 24 to 72 hours.
Updated Friday, March 6, 2015 at 10:10 a.m.: This story has been changed to reflect Heather Burke works for the Denver Department of Public works and to say that Denver paid overtime to workers so they could fill potholes on the weekend.
