Rather than use State Aid Road funds to force utilities to move their lines and new ditches to be built, the Lamar County Board of Supervisors decided to consider using other funding and repave the roadway on Old Hwy. 11 near Oak Grove Middle School.
County Engineer Don Walker presented the proposal to the Supervisors at last Thursday’s meeting at the William J. “Pete” Gamble III Chancery Courthouse.
Walker said the State Aid Project originally called for overlaying and maintaining Old Hwy. 11 from Richburg Road to Old Hwy. 24. However, the traffic count got in the way.
“Based on the traffic count, they are requiring shoulders to be widened to a certain width, which creates a pretty deep issue with us,” he said. “We have to widen the shoulders another five feet and we have to widen the road from 11-foot lanes to 12-foot lanes.”
The consequences of widening the shoulders will force utility lines to be moved.
“It means what we are going to have to do if we continue to pursue it is to reconstruct all ditches, move ditches over and have utilities relocated throughout the entire route because it’s going to affect all of them,” Walker said. “The project has become a lot more complicated; I am still going to get State Aid down onsite about that. So, we are still looking at that project.”
Walker gave options to using the State Aid funds.
“There should be a mechanism that would allow us to maintain it, but the traffic obviously picked up,” he said. “There is an option if we can’t work it out. I don’t know how you feel, whether you want to do some paving in-house. That’s always an option, but we intended to fight that issue. But, we have $500,000 is allocated to that project that needs to be utilized so we can use those State Aid project funds.”
The next meeting will be at 9 a.m. July 2 at the Chancery Courthouse in Purvis.
