Ruston Paving Advises Superintendents Ahead Of Expected ‘Super El Niño’: Soil Stabilization Keeps a Job Site Moving

The paving contractor urges superintendents to plan for saturated subgrade now, and to treat wet soil in place instead of waiting it out or hauling it away

SYRACUSE, NY, UNITED STATES, October 23, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — With forecasters watching for a strong El Niño this winter, the kind often called a “super El Niño,” Ruston Paving is advising construction superintendents to plan now for the problem a wet season creates underfoot: subgrade that takes on water and will not give it back.

Strong El Niño winters have historically brought above-normal rain to much of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, including Virginia and North Carolina. Farther north they tend to run milder, which can mean more of the season’s precipitation falls as rain rather than snow. Either way, a job site ends up in the same place.

Rain does not damage a construction schedule by falling on it. It damages the schedule by soaking the ground underneath it, and then by keeping it soaked. Once subgrade takes on water past a certain point, it stops behaving like a foundation. It will not compact, it pumps and ruts under loaded trucks, and nothing placed on top of it will hold its grade. On most sites, work stops until the weather dries the ground out on its own, which in a wet winter can take weeks rather than days.

The company, established in 1943 and now one hundred percent employee-owned, offers superintendents four pieces of advice for the season ahead.

Find the soft spots before the rain does. Low areas, clay soils, poorly drained cuts and anywhere water ponded after the last storm are where a wet winter will stop work first. Mapping them now and getting the soil tested lets the binder and treatment depth be specified ahead of time instead of improvised under pressure.

1. Decide on the fix before it is needed. The conventional answer to saturated subgrade is to undercut: excavate the wet material, haul it off site and bring in stone to replace it. It works, but it means paying twice for trucking, paying for imported aggregate and sending usable soil to a spoil pile.

2. Soil stabilization takes the opposite approach. A binder, usually quicklime, lime kiln dust or portland cement, is spread across the wet area and mixed into the soil with a rotary mixer to a specified depth. Quicklime reacts with the water it finds, and the reaction both consumes free moisture chemically and gives off heat that drives more of it off. Ground that could not be compacted in the morning can often be compacted the same afternoon.

3. Look past the drying. In clay soils, lime also triggers a longer chemical reaction that reduces plasticity and raises bearing strength, so the treated layer is stronger and less sensitive to the next storm than the soil it replaced. Cement stabilization produces a bound layer that serves as a structural working platform in its own right. In a winter that brings rain after rain, that staying power matters as much as the first day’s drying. The material also stays on site, and the trucks stay off the road.

4. Protect the paving window. A parking lot or site package that loses two weeks to wet subgrade loses them at the start, which pushes the paving into colder weather and can push the whole project into the following season. Keeping the platform workable through the wet months is what keeps the back end of the schedule intact.

“The soil that is in your way is usually the soil you are going to build on, and the question is only whether you truck it away or fix it in place,” said Don Barry, Director of Business Development at Ruston Paving. “Most of the time we can treat it, compact it the same day, and leave the owner with better ground than they started with. The expensive option is doing nothing and losing the season.”

About Ruston Paving
Ruston Paving is a commercial asphalt paving contractor established in 1943 and one hundred percent employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The company operates divisions in Syracuse, Rochester and Watertown, New York, Northern Virginia and Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, providing commercial paving, parking lot repair and replacement, asphalt milling, Further announcements are published in the Ruston Paving newsroom.

Don Barry
Ruston Paving
+1 315-437-2533
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