The Cass County Road Commission will re-pave former Michigan 205 in Mason Township next summer with a mixture of ground up passenger tires and asphalt, thanks to a reimbursement grant from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

The road commission was notified last week that the state had executed the contract for the $362,000 project, of which the DNRE will pay half of the cost of the materials and equipment, or $181,000. The money is intended to support the increased markets for scrap tires and comes from the Scrap Tire Market Development Grant Program of the DNRE’s Waste and Hazardous Materials Division.

“Under the current state rules, it probably would have taken us five years to re-pave that road because of the ways funds are allocated on a year-to-year basis,” said Louis Csokasy, road commission manager.

The highway, now officially named Old 205, has been a county road under the jurisdiction of the Cass County Road Commission since 2002. At that time, the agency turned over a new four-lane road it had constructed, Michigan 217 near Union, to the state. In an exchange, it agreed to assume jurisdiction over Michigan 205, a feeder trunk line 1.7 miles long and 40 feet wide that connects Indiana 19 at the Michigan State Line north of Elkhart with U.S. 12.

The road commission selected Old 205 for the DNRE grant application because, like U.S. 12, it was built by the Michigan Department of Transportation. Also, U.S. 12 recently was re-paved in the vicinity and its regular asphalt surface will be evaluated against the rubberized asphalt on Old 205 for durability.

The road commission plans to make minor modifications to its asphalt plant to process the paving materials. The 4,000 passenger tires for the project will be delivered by a state supplier in White Pigeon, Mich.

The DNRE grant is the first of four grant applications that the road commission has submitted to the state this year. The others are safety grant applications on which the road commission is awaiting decisions.  Two are for replacement of guardrails for county bridges and the third proposes to modify the accident-prone intersection of Cassopolis Road at Old 205.