Drought conditions lead to productive Summer for roofers, roadcrews

PEORIA (25News Now) - While the drought has eased for Central Illinois, it’s not over. However, the dry weather isn’t bad for everyone.

A long, dry stretch of weather this season has helped business boom for many that work outside, like River City Roofing.

“The extreme dry weather we’ve had definitely spoiled us as a roofing company. We’ve seen the increased productivity and efficiency, of course, on job sites,” said President of River City Roofing Tim Garrison.

Being a bigger company, Garrison says they’re getting a lot done in one day.

“When the weather is clear, we’re doing seven, eight roofs a day,” said Garrison.

That productivity combined with early season severe weather that caused roof damage leads to a lot of repairs.

“We are definitely having a record year,” said Garrison.

But being outside working all day means less attention to other busy work.

“You rely on those rain days to get kind of caught up on certain things such as warehousing and, you know, punch list items and things and when you’re running complete jobs every single day. It’s been a challenge but it’s a good challenge to have,” said Garrison.

From roofs to roads, dry weather is keeping public works crews ahead on daily tasks like filling potholes.

“The dry days really help us in the sense to get those done, and to be able to do more throughout the day, and throughout the weeks,” said Nick McMillion with Peoria Public Works.

However for larger projects like the construction on Glen Avenue in Peoria, those cone zones won’t go away sooner than planned.

“it doesn’t mean that there’ll be done any quicker per se. Everything is kind of on schedule on on, on track to be completed when they were set out to be completed,” said McMillion.

McMillion added that they’ve been fortunate not having to extend resources and extra time on cleaning up roads after storms.

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