Lancaster county seeing rock shortage

A lot near Emerald, Ne. is typically filled with 80 to 100 thousand tons of rock. Right now, there’s only one pile left, with roughly a couple hundred ton. 

“Things started to thaw out, our roads started to fall apart, and building the roads back up the way that they should be, we ended up using a lot more rock than we typically would,” Brandon Cramer, Lancaster Co. district supervisor, said. 

The county normally gets rock from Weeping Water, Ne., but because of the flooding, Weeping Water doesn’t have any rock either. So, they had to look else where. 

“We did find rock down in Kansas at this point that we have purchased, but the cost of getting that up here is going to be 2 to 3 times what it normally would cost us,” Cramer said. 

Cramer says the county is over budget in just about every area you could imagine. With all the labor put in fixing the roads, they’re 250 percent over budget on overtime.

All of the rock normally goes towards maintenance on gravel roads, but it also goes to the construction projects that are lined up for this summer already.