It took a little more than 20 days and $2.99 million to do the Full Depth Reclamation (FDR) of the southwest to northeast runway at the Rolla National Airport at Vichy in Maries County.

Airport Manager Darrin Bacon said the FDR project on Runway #422 is the first FDR project ever to take place at a Missouri airport. The FDR project was done on the 5,500 ft. long and 100 ft. wide runway at the airport.

The process pulls up the old asphalt runway and that aggregate is ground up and used as part of the new asphalt surface. The first layer poured was concrete followed by the asphalt. Then, an additional two-inch layer of asphalt was poured on top.

Bacon said they are planning to do more FDR projects and like it because there is not as much waste product. There were some millings that were not used at the Vichy project, but most of it was used. The runway was in poor condition and they began looking at doing this project about two years ago. There were cracks in the runway that were getting wider and deeper.

Vichy Airport became a test spot for the process. “Everybody seems to like it,” Bacon commented. There were cost savings from using the milled surface as they didn’t have to get rid of it. They took off about two inches on top and used the runway surface to grind up for the new asphalt layers.

Capital Asphalt, Jefferson City, is the contractor on the job. The result is a super-smooth, layered and angled runway that has drainage by design with the crown in the middle. Bacon said runways have to have drainage so the airplanes don’t hydroplane. Because they used an old runway, there is a slight descent at each end of about .05 percent.

Funding was from several sources, the majority from the FAA, but also from MoDOT, and the City of Rolla.

Bacon said the airport’s two runways were closed for 20 days with the airport completely shut down to all but helicopter traffic. The airport’s runways were scheduled to open Tuesday, Aug. 18 at 5 p.m. In about 30 days the project will be finished out when they apply some paint in September.

Bacon said the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on airplane traffic at the runway. Before the shutdown, fuel sales totaled about $100,000 for two months. Lately, it's been reduced to about $15,000 to $20,000 every month. He hopes sales will come back and the airport can slowly get back to near normal.