Here is my letter

Mrs. Smith,

How are you? My name is ''Roughneck'' and I live in the Castlegate community. I know you have heard this all before, but I am going to say it again. ???º Ocotillo road from Schnepf to Ironwood is in shambles. They keep trying to fill the holes and all that does is makes it worse. The bumps in the road are horrendous. People are going to cause an accident the way the try to avoid them. This is a major life safety issue with the cement trucks, school busses and dumb people who continuously go around. I do not want my family hurt because of the non-action from the county.

Are there any plans to widen Ocotillo? With the amount of people that are moving-in in this immediate area Ocotillo is a real pain to commute on anymore. I sat for 30 minutes today just to get to Ironwood. I work at the Gateway Airport, so there is no other way to go. Why does the county continue home builders to keep putting up thousands of homes in the Queen Creek area, but will not keep up on the road situation? There is only one way in/out from the Castlegate Community. If a major incident was to occur and we needed to evacuate our neighborhood, there would be a major problem. The county supervisors need to look at our situation here and come up with a plan to assist us in times of emergencies and normal day to day commuting. I am sure the other communities are feeling the same way!

Like I said before, I know I am probably the hundredth email/letter you have received today, but this is a big problem. Someone, God forbid, is going to get hurt and the inaction of the county is going to be the fault. Please assist us in fixing this issue. The ?¡?§company line?¡?¨ of we know about the problems and we are working to resolve them is not acceptable to me. Please let me know what is being done. Thank you.

''Roughneck''

Please keep the pressure on the county!

Ocotillo Road

Here is two emails I recieved back from the County:

Thank You for the email. You are correct that we are aware of the situation. We are working on a contract to resurface Ocotillo Road. The engineering is currently underway (we need to design it to withstand the heavy truck traffic so it will not fail prematurely), and we plan to be under construction in the fall.

Please feel free to use the above email address for future correspondence, as they come directly to me.

Thanks again, Greg Stanley
Gregory.Stanley@co.pinal.az.us



FYI.... A Capital project is in the works for Ocotillo Road between
Kenworthy and Schnepf Road. We are very aware of its condition and are
working to remedy the problem quickly. The project is currently in the
design phase with an estimated construction start date of Fall '07.
Improvements consist of removing the entire 1-mile stretch of asphalt
and replacing it with a new thicker section in order to prevent future
maintenance issues. The project doesn't involve widening of the roadway,
we are simply removing and replacing the existing asphalt section. We
appreciate your patience as we work to improve your road.
Wilbur.Freeman@co.pinal.az.us

A good reply

Here is what I got back from them:

Hi - Both of these belong to Public Works. I asked the project engineer to put together a timeline for publication regarding Ocotillo. We are planning to do a mill and overlay. We selected one of our on-call engineers to do the engineering, as we need to make sure the road has adequate structure to withstand the heavy truck traffic it currently gets. We do anticipate being under construction in the fall and will get more specifics posted to our web site as soon as we establish the milestones for design/advertising, etc.

The Schnepf Bridge replacement is currently under design. The replacement structure has to be timed with agreements with the various rock product companies that are in the creek bed. The basic problem is that if we replace the structure without fixing the underlying problems (the uncontrolled mining), the bridge will fail again during a heavy rain event. We have been working with the miners, various hydrologists, and of course a slew of attorneys to iron out the agreements. We do have an updated message concerning the bridge on our web site at the following address:

http://www.ironwoodproject.com/schnepf_bridge.html

By Overlord Zargax

Schnepf Bridge

There is a link on the home page of this website for the Bridge. I believe the timeline is included.

By Michael