Daviess County has a distinction that officials don't like. It is number one in Indiana in the number of miles of gravel roads. The county has almost 600 miles of gravel roads, and is looking to cut into that amount by utilizing grant funding to maintain current paved roads and upgrade some gravel roads to hard surface.
Last year the county used a combination of state grant and local matching money to rebuild CR 650E and put new pavement on CR 550N. This year a similar funding is proposed to rebuild CR 350E and pave CR 200N between CR 650E and 900E. All except CR 350N run through the Daviess County's Amish community.
Officials say they are disappointed that the roads seem to be getting damaged almost as fast as the pavement goes down.
"We're seeing deterioration because of the horses shoes," said Daviess County Highway Supervisor Phil Cornelius. "It's discouraging. It's just the community we live in."
"It's disappointing to me that we pave new roads like last fall, spent $1.2 million on it and you drive it today and the surface is all scarred up," said President of the Daviess County Council Mike Sprinkle. "Someone needs to responsible for that damage in the end. It's disappointing that you go out and you fix a road like that and then it's damaged."
The issue is a familiar one in Daviess County.
Steel horse shoes eat into the pavement leaving ruts in the blacktop. Still, to grow business and opportunity in the eastern part of the county, roads need to be upgraded to pavement.
"When you look at the traffic counts up there, the amount of business being generated, the amount of tourism being generated, leaving those road gravel is not a good solution," said Cornelius. "That penalizes the vehicular traffic driving the road. I understand that the council has reservations about paving roads in the Amish community. As we try to pave more roads, it is going to become more and more important for us to find a solution to the problems caused by horseshoes."
Daviess County has done some experiments on ways to try and limit the damage caused by horses. The CR 900E project that includes buggy lanes has a mix of asphalt in those lanes that includes steel slag. The county is also experimenting with a more rubberized pavement to try and limit the damage.
"I still think the answer is in the shoe," said Cornelius. "If we can come up with an answer to the shoe, the damage to the road goes away."
The county has looked into rubber hose shoes. It even has several sets on order. But getting people to use them might be more difficult.
"I've had some fellas come to me and tell me they would rather pay for the road repairs than mess with the rubber shoes," said Councilman Dave Smith.
That intransigence leaves the county in a Catch 22 situation where there is a desire, need and even financing to pave roads, but a reluctance to spend money on blacktop that will just be torn up by daily use from some of its rural residents.
"I know I pay a lot of fuel tax for my trucks," said Sprinkle. "There's road taxes and plate fees and to me we may need to go to the folks who are damaging the roads to pay for the cost of repairs to keep them in shape. There needs to be a solution. I don't feel the grant money we get to keep our roads up should go to repairing damage that's done by local folks."
"I wish I could flip a switch and come up with an answer," said Cornelius, "but I don't have one. I know we aren't the only county facing this. The folks in Pennsylvania, the folks in Ohio, in Northern Indiana, we are all going through the same thing. You would think somewhere, some genius would come up with a way to fix this."
One possibility, at least temporarily, would be to raise the cost of buggy licenses to cover the annual cost of repairs that now run up to $50,000 annually. That cost would climb as more roads become paved in the Amish community.
"If we can't fix the shoe and we can't fix the road, then money may well turn out to be the third option," said Cornelius. "It costs us time and money to continually repair the damage being done. You don't see Elkhart with 500 miles of gravel roads. They are paved and they are keeping them patched. That is their solution so they can grow as a county, and people don't have to drive in dust and mud."