MARENGO - Counties in eastern Iowa are about out of ideas for making rural roads drivable. Some county supervisors can only shrug their shoulders and ask people to stay off the roads. It has happened in Cedar County. And now Iowa County also wants people to voluntarily stay off the sloppy roads. The Iowa County Board of Supervisors was thinking of banning all cars from gravel roads. But they came up with so many exemptions, the only thing they could do is to ask people to please stay away.

The board of supervisors met one of its biggest crowds ever for a meeting in Marengo. People are fed up with the roads. County resident Terry Ites said, “Yesterday afternoon it was getting to the point of next to impossible."

Board chair Rick Gerard said, “What we need is to get a little break in the weather. Get some drying conditions where we can get gravel on the roads and allow our guys to maintain it.”

As everyone in eastern Iowa knows, the dry spells have been few and far between this winter. The gravel is missing from many gravel roads. Iowa County wanted to force people to find alternative routes. But with enough gravel roads to stretch from Marengo, Iowa to Denver, Colorado, it was not a feasible idea. Instead, the county is asking big trucks to stay off the roads unless the ground is frozen. For now that will have to do. Ites said, “We're going to get to a point when it doesn't freeze overnight because we're getting close to the middle of March and then we're going to be in big trouble."

The supervisors considered a tax, like in Washington County, to help cover the cost to repair the roads. But the idea was nixed because no one knows what next year will bring. Iowa County resident Craig Rohrssen said, “We can't have large quantities of money sitting around. On the other hand we need to be able to get it very quickly."

County residents say this winter surprised everyone. And they say if they run into this problem again, they will all be to blame.

The county is banning vehicles weighing 8-tons from seal-coated roads. A lot of money went into renovating those roads and the engineer wants the work to last.

Email Steve Nicoles at Steve.Nicoles@kcrg.com