Once a tree-eating monster is caught up in all of it's glory, the best results are going to be produced when there is a place mat involved. When the Army Corps of Engineers first scoured the proposed wetland-sensitive footprint of the Carolina Bays Parkway project in South Carolina, the primary concern was the level of disturbance such an undertaking would generate. The thought of huge machines clawing through the dense vegetation was too much to bear, so it was decided to keep the track lines as faint as possible-and the best way to do that was to require the use of mats. "The entire project, it was either over or through designated wetlands, so we had to be very careful in our clearing," Lou Hutch-erson, project manager from Flatiron, told Roads & Bridges. The only way through the thick landscape of trees and brush was with a one-of-a-kind excavator that had an appetite for mulching in place. R.E. Goodson, the subcontractor charged with clearing the area for the 7.5-mile, six-lane concrete roadway that will extend S.R. 31 from Rte. 544 over the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway down to S.R. 707, hired a firm that specialized in the process calling for the use of a John Deere excavator with a rotary mower attachment. Mats are placed in front of the machine when it is ready to move forward; otherwise it is just sitting on Myrtle Beach could be narrowed down to one primary obstacle: traffic signals. Red lights on S.R. 17 create backups, which turn a casual trip into one plagued with tension and anxious-ness. The South Carolina DOT decided it was time to offer a route free of stop gaps, and the first phase of the Carolina Bays Extension Project was set in motion. Flatiron is now on phase three, which is scheduled to be complete in 2016. The first task is clearing the area and constructing the first of seven bridges, which is a 3,600-ft-long precast, prestressed concrete girder/plate steel girder bridge stretching across the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway. Six more bridges and a 9-in.-thick concrete pavement will follow over the next two years.
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