Maine Department of Transportation officials are temporarily ceasing use of a protective sealant on main travel lanes across the state.
There are questions about whether the technique, called fog sealing, may have played a role in recent crashes along a stretch of Route 225 in Rome, and officials said they’re using “an abundance of caution” in halting the technique.
Department of Transportation spokesman Paul Merrill said Route 225 was repaved in 2018 and had started to crack and develop other deficiencies. He said a contractor applied the asphalt sealant in June to extend the life of the highway.
“We’re still looking into what happened, but it appears the application rate was incorrect. In other words, we put down too much of it and that caused some slick surfaces,” he said.
Merrill said older pavement absorbs more of the sealant than newer surfaces. He said the Transportation Department is removing the sealed surface on Route 225, which will be left rough this winter and repaved next year.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.