Geary Dome and Fry roads:

Where multiple blowouts drop the Michelin Man to his puffy white knees.

Where the rubber meets the road - and the road wins.

Where the normally sleepy and now retired Fisk Tire child icon is wide awake and picking steel out of his feet.

"It's a routine thing to go out in the morning and check on the tires before you head out," Gary Chase said.

Chase and his family live on Henrie Road, which is accessible only by driving east on Geary Dome and then south on Fry Road.

Chase's wife, Barbara, and other area residents told Natrona County commissioners about her family's tire travails two weeks ago.

Since last summer, the Chases have fixed about 30 blown tires because of the metal inadvertently mixed with the crushed concrete the county bought from BP Amoco and spread on Geary and Fry roads, he said.

The county won't reimburse residents for their damaged tires, he said.

On Tuesday, though, Road and Bridge Department supervisor Mike Haigler sent a grader and magnet-carrying tractor out to the area to try to clean up metal fragments on the snow-moistened roads, the most recent of dozens of efforts.

County employee Harold Mason drove the John Deere 5520 with the two-wheel trailer containing a static magnet donated by BP Amoco.

When he reached the intersection of Fry Road and the railroad tracks, the magnet already had picked up rebar, screws, nails, wire mesh, lots of filings reminiscent of children's science classes, and even small stones, Mason said.

"I think it's in the dirt," he said.

The metal even has penetrated the sturdy tires used by tractors and road graders, he said.

This problem arrived last summer, in an effort to solve two other problems.

Natrona County needed aggregate for Geary, Fry and Bessemer Bend roads, Haigler explained.

BP Amoco had thousands of tons of old concrete from the former refinery.

After taking bids, the county agreed to buy 15,385 tons of crushed concrete for $100,000, or $6.50 a ton, Haigler said. That compared favorably to the $12 to $15 the county would have had to spend on aggregate, he said.

"It was going to get buried if we didn't use it," he said.

But the Road and Bridge Department didn't discover the metal mixed in with the concrete until it had nearly finished spreading it on the roads, he said.

Some of the concrete had no metal, but Fry Road got lots of fragments, Haigler said.

BP Amoco's environmental business manager Joe Deschamp said metal fragments are inevitable in crushed concrete, which is better as a road base than surface aggregate.

His company and the county reached an agreement in early 2005 stipulating the county would buy the concrete after a contractor crushed it and used magnets to remove the metal.

Deschamp showed road and bridge officials the crushed concrete and the pieces of metal that would come with it, he said.

"They knew fully what they were getting," Deschamp said.

The county could remedy the problem by spreading clean gravel on the roads, he said.

Haigler said the county has repeatedly tried smoothing the road, but the road grader's blade just clips the top of the washboard surface when the road is dry. Grading is like sanding wood, smoothing the surface but removing the road material.

Paving would cost too much and would require its own maintenance, said commission Chairman Drew Perkins.

Another product already in use on one city road stabilizes the road surface, could help, but it costs about $3,000 per quarter mile and, once applied, the road cannot be graded for a year.

"The likelihood is that it will get worse before it gets better," Haigler said.

Some area residents have talked about forming a special improvement district, but that would require the financial participation of everyone in the affected area.

Meanwhile, the county will keep grading Geary and Fry roads and remove the metal, Haigler said.

"We're just going to run the magnet until it's gone," he said.

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.