By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

ROAD works currently being conducted on East Bay Street near the Fort Montagu bend are to rectify the road’s “bleeding” asphalt mixture, a senior official at the Ministry of Works said yesterday. 

Colin Higgs, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works and Urban Development, told The Tribune that when officials initially resurfaced that section of East Bay Street a few months ago, the paving machine experienced a malfunction, resulting in it moving slower than usual and causing more bitumen than normal to be injected into the asphalt mixture. As a result, he said the bitumen - the thick, sticky, black liquid portion of the asphalt mixture - is “bleeding up through the asphalt”.

Yesterday, concerns were raised as to why the section of East Bay Street was being excavated so soon after it had been repaved.

“What they may be doing now is milling out a section where they had some problems with the equipment and too much bitumen came into the mix and it bled,” Mr Higgs told The Tribune yesterday. “It’s a small section as you’re driving east on the left hand lane where the bitumen bled up. You saw just tar and not the actual asphalt. So they’re supposed to mill that out and repave that section. 

“They call it bleeding where they had a problem with the paver – I’m not exactly sure what the problem was. The paver wasn’t moving at the right speed and too much bitumen was put in that section. The bitumen is bleeding up through the asphalt because there’s too much bitumen in the mixture.”

Mr Higgs also said officials at the Water and Sewage Corporation were conducting an excavation exercise on East Bay Street near the Potter’s Cay Dock exit due to a leak they encountered during efforts to redevelop the dock area. 

“I think they encountered a leak there where they were doing the work, where they’re moving out the conch shells and redeveloping that part of Potter’s Cay,” he said. “Not sure if they completed that work and they’re doing a reinstatement there now, but they had that lane completely closed yesterday evening.”