There are only two seasons in Montana, it is said, winter and road construction. 

That seems to be more true than ever this summer, as there are construction projects around almost every corner in western Montana. Some of the busiest areas including Highway 93 South between Missoula and Hamilton.

Ed Toavs is the Missoula District Administrator with the Montana Department of Highways. He said there are three separate projects in that area that have been underway for several weeks.

"The first one if the Florence to Stevensville project," Toavs said. "With that project we're milling out the old asphalt, paving in the asphalt and then chip sealing the highway. We've pretty much got that project complete through the chip seal, but we'll have to come back in about a month and do the final epoxy and striping."

"The second project," Toavs continued. "That's called the Florence Safety Project, where we're adding median curbing on the north side of the intersection with the Eastside Highway, and that project is also pretty much complete, except that we're waiting on the arrival of some luminaire poles, and we also anticipate chip sealing that section in the first week of August."

"The third project we have is the largest project," he said. "It's the Lolo to Missoula pavement preservation project. We're working on the crack sealing where we go in with a crack sealing material that has to be applied in the daytime so that the warm temperatures can help it adhere to the concrete. That should be finishing up on Saturday, and we're also going to be working on some luminaires along Brooks from the Buckhouse Bridge to Reserve . Then, finally, what we're looking at is once that crack seal work is done, we'll have to wait about 30 days to apply what we call microsurfacing, or a thin layer of asphalt to the highway. We also have some concrete barrier that has to be done with that project. But, the contractor, due to the heavy traffic on that road, is going to do that at night. We also have some signal work we have to do on several intersections where we're trying to have the least amount of impact as possible.

Toavs said any information on these and future projects can be found on the Montana Department of Transportation website.

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