A stretch of dusty road near American Canyon’s Little League is throwing many for a loop.

Its most immediate neighbor, longtime American Canyon resident Fran Lemos, said school buses generate dust every time they travel the road to reach Napa Junction Elementary School, blanketing everything from cars to furniture.

She began to sneeze and wheeze this summer, she said. Recently her doctor diagnosed her with allergies.

“Sixty years, I’ve been here. I never had allergies,” Lemos said this week.

“It’s the dust.”

Her daughter, she noted, also began to cough during her visit this summer.

Lemos, 79, has taken her case to the city and the Napa Valley Unified School District.

“I am begging for you to please do something about that,” Lemos told the American Canyon City Council late October. “It’s affecting my health. I’d appreciate very much if you could do something.”

So far, neither the city, which owns a stretch of the road, nor the Napa Valley Unified School District, which owns the other, have been able to find a solution, much to the dismay of Lemos and Little League parents who park near the fields. There is no funding, city and school representatives have said.

Rob Shipman, president of Little League, fully sympathizes with Lemos.

“On hot days, you could see the dust going right into her house,” he said.

The road needs to be repaired and paved, Shipman said, noting that school buses use the road, along with private cars and garbage trucks that stop by the ball fields.

“It’s a safety hazard,” Shipman said, adding he would have come to the City Council with Lemos for support had he known she was going to bring the issue up.

The city of American Canyon, which also owns the ball fields, three years ago re-graded the road, pulverized the pavement, and added lime. But that made the dust problem even worse, Lemos said.

Robert Weil, the city’s former public works director, in July wrote that the long-term solution entails constructing a new, paved driveway and parking lot. Design is under way, Weil wrote. “However, completion will depend on available funding,” he said. Weil left the city’s employment this summer.

The paving could soon fail because of a lack of structural base, wrote  Weil, who recommended an application of used pavement grindings to the driveway. The city does not own a truck to regularly be able to water the road, he wrote.

American Canyon’s public works department in September applied a $2,500 biodegradable oil solution used by the U.S. Forest Service to control dust generation, according to Jeff Atteberry, the city’s interim public works director recently, shortly before he left the city as well.

Lemos, who said the dust control treatment did not effectively control dust long, asked that gravel be laid along the street.

But Atteberry, who said more applications will be necessary, said gravel will not effectively prevent dust generation.

The only effective solution, he said, is to rebuild the road. But that will be costly because of the poor soil quality — clay that expands and shrinks when it rains. The sponge-like soil moves, and, if not controlled, breaks up pavement over time, Atteberry explained.

“It’s the worst kind of clay,” he said.

Atteberry could not give an exact figure on the estimated construction costs, other than to say it will be more than $100,000.

Shipman, a Caltrans employee, estimated repairs of the road at $750,000.

Lemos hoped that school buses could stop on Hess Road, but Don Evans, director of school planning and construction for the Napa Unified School District, said that would be impossible because the road has no shoulder. It also would be impossible for the buses to turn around.

School officials park the buses there because there is not enough room to maneuver the buses in front of Napa Junction Elementary School.

Lemos, who lives in the house her late husband, father, and other relatives built 60 years ago, loves her house and has no plans to move.

She still hopes for a solution.