CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — On a cool spring day 3NEWS found a work crew laying down asphalt along Sedwick Road between Clarkwood and Southern Minerals Road. The temperature of fresh asphalt is right around 300 degrees. It will eventually cool down, but during the summer months it can heat up to around 115 degrees. That’s the same temperature you’ll find along all of our hot tourist spots around downtown. Heat that makes people want to get inside.
Right now the City of Corpus Christi has a product it has purchased that it hopes to put down over some of our downtown streets to see if it can in fact lower the temperature of the pavement.
”We’re now looking at what’s called Durashield," Mayor Paulette Guajardo said. "It’s supposed to lessen or reduce the heat radiation up to 20 or 25 degrees and that’s huge for us down here in South Texas.”
Guajardo heard about the product and asked city staff to look into it. They did and now $50,000 later the city has bought enough of the product to cover about a mile of city streets.
"We did buy some of the product to do a pilot project in the city. We’re still currently doing research where we can find the best location to make sure we do have a successful pilot,” Public Works Director Ernie De La Garza said.
The mayor told 3NEWS that if the sealant works, it would help to cool down events like Buc Days and ArtWalk.
The City of San Antonio applied the product to some of its most walked parts of town and is studying the results.
"I’m hoping it’s something we will be able to implement across the city,” Guajardo said.
De La Garza is hoping to find a location by the summer and apply this chemical and then study it to see if it does lower the street temperatures.