CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It may pale next to Boston's Big Dig, but contractors are digging pretty darned deep along Quarrier Street this week as part of a repaving project.

Normally contractors scrape off only the top couple of inches of asphalt when repaving a city street. But workers are going 1 to 2 feet deep on Quarrier Street, Assistant City Engineer Tony Fish said Tuesday.

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"This section of Quarrier is a repeat offender on the paving list," Fish said. "The reason this area is difficult to maintain, historically, is there is a lot of groundwater running under the surface.

"The groundwater is coming in under the pavement, across the street, migrating toward the river from the north end of town," he said. But some of it percolates upward, cracking the top layer of pavement and forcing the city to repave it every few years.

"It's like icing a bad cake over and over again. We decided to do something more significant."

Following Fish's designs, contractors will remove all traces of existing pavement - both asphalt and concrete. They'll compact the soil underneath and slope it toward the edges of the street, dig trenches along the edges and install perforated pipe that will connect to the city's storm sewer system.

Then they'll fill in with a thick layer of asphalt, called open-graded free-draining base, topped with about 2 inches of regular sealed asphalt.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It may pale next to Boston's Big Dig, but contractors are digging pretty darned deep along Quarrier Street this week as part of a repaving project.

Normally contractors scrape off only the top couple of inches of asphalt when repaving a city street. But workers are going 1 to 2 feet deep on Quarrier Street, Assistant City Engineer Tony Fish said Tuesday.

City engineers decided to try a different technique on the two-block stretch of Quarrier from Leon Sullivan Way to McFarland Street, which has been bugging them for years, Fish said.

"This section of Quarrier is a repeat offender on the paving list," Fish said. "The reason this area is difficult to maintain, historically, is there is a lot of groundwater running under the surface.

"The groundwater is coming in under the pavement, across the street, migrating toward the river from the north end of town," he said. But some of it percolates upward, cracking the top layer of pavement and forcing the city to repave it every few years.

"It's like icing a bad cake over and over again. We decided to do something more significant."

Following Fish's designs, contractors will remove all traces of existing pavement - both asphalt and concrete. They'll compact the soil underneath and slope it toward the edges of the street, dig trenches along the edges and install perforated pipe that will connect to the city's storm sewer system.

Then they'll fill in with a thick layer of asphalt, called open-graded free-draining base, topped with about 2 inches of regular sealed asphalt.

The idea is to capture the groundwater, let it trickle down through the base, direct it to the trenches beside the road and remove it through the storm sewers.

"It's not that much more costly," Fish said. "The most significant cost is the material going back in - a more high-tech material.

"We're hoping this will perform like the Interstate paving system. It's the exact same design. ... If it works well we'll use it in other places in the city."

Contractors from West Virginia Paving are working only at night, to keep traffic disruptions at a minimum. They began late Sunday, making saw cuts along the south side of the street, and began excavating Monday evening. They'll fill in the base on that side within 2 inches of the surface, then move to the other lane.

Fish estimates they'll be done in three weeks. "We may even finish quicker than that, because excavation was faster than expected.

It depends on what utility lines they find. A gas line is buried on the north side of the street, but no one knows how deep until workers start digging.

The contractors left a gap at the Dunbar Street intersection to keep the area open to traffic, but will eventually dig that up too, Fish said. "We're going to try to do that all at once, in one 12-hour shift."

Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com or 348-5102.