Marquette County Road DA Issues

Ewing Township residents speak their minds to the Marquette County Road Commission.

The township has no paved roads, and the main dirt road was already in bad shape.

But residents say the spring thaw isn’t helping.

That main road is Marquette County Road DA, also called County Road 432.

Part of it runs through Ewing Township, and part of it runs through Rock in Delta County.

The Ewing Township portion is West Maple Ridge Road.

Township Supervisor Arnie Sirtola told the Road Commission the already-bad situation is getting worse.

He had help from his neighbors, one of whom has lived in the township since 1937.

Howard Aalto says anyone who claims their own road is in poor shape has probably never been on West Maple Ridge, and he says it has many of the same problems now that it had more than 70 years ago.

His wife, Sonja Aalto, says she’s kept her own car in their garage for more than a month because of ground clearance issues on the road.

She knows of a young woman who recently had her car’s muffler ripped off by contact with the uneven road surface while she was driving.

Another long-term problem – Ewing Township is physically separated from the rest of the county by the Escanaba River, and there’s no bridge spanning the river in that area.

Road Commission engineer and manager Jim Iwanicki says the commission will get survey crews out to that area as soon as possible — the idea being that once the road dries out from the spring thaw, the county can place more gravel there to make the road more drivable.