Local road departments are scrambling to deal with issues that have popped up after last week saw more than a month’s worth of rain dumped on the area.
Potholes have broken open by the dozens on Oktibbeha and Lowndes County roads, and with the weather finally clear after last week’s near-constant rain, city and county crews are out in force to fix them.
“We’ve got an extra truck out trying to catch up on some of these potholes,” said Columbus Public Works Director Casey Bush. “They’ve gotten tremendous, along with all the other stuff going on in the city.”
From Feb. 17-24, nearly 6.5 inches of rain fell on Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties, according to the National Weather Service. The average precipitation total for the month is about 5.7 inches, and the area has received nearly 8.5 total inches since the beginning of February.
Bush said the on again, off again rain is breaking open potholes that had already been repaired.
“It’s not actually new potholes,” he said. “Basically, it’s the same potholes. Once we deal with it and we get cold mix in — in the summer, it would work well because it bonds together in the heat. In the winter, with the cold, wet weather, it’s hard to bond together.
“Once we fix the potholes and we get a good, hard rain and cars travel across them, it beats the mix back out of them,” he continued. “So we’re going back in and patching the same potholes that we’ve already fixed.”
Despite the cyclical nature of the potholes getting fixed, the rain bringing them back, and having to fix them again, Bush said waiting for the weather to clear for good isn’t an option.
“If we wait, it’ll make the pothole worse, and we’d have problems with cars getting messed up,” he said. “We’d have claims with bus tires coming in or people trying to get their cars fixed. We don’t want that to happen, so we need to go out there and fix those holes.”
For Columbus, which was struck by an EF-3 tornado on Saturday, the potholes are putting an extra strain on the Public Works Department.
“I could be using those guys that I’m having to put out to help with potholes to help with some of this storm debris we have out here,” Bush said.
Lowndes County Road Manager Ronnie Burns said the county has been keeping an eye on potholes to patch during the recent stretch of wet weather. He said it’s also had to deal with eight to 10 downed trees and some driveway culverts and road shoulders that needed repairs after the heavy rain.
For now, Burns said, he’s waiting for things to dry out some more to see where the worst damage is.
“We’re in pretty good shape,” Burns said. “It’s not too bad right now, until we see how much damage the water did.”
He estimated it would be the middle of the week before they could fully assess the damage.
Starkville and Oktibbeha County
Oktibbeha County Road Manager Fred Hal Baggett said potholes have broken out all over the county.
The county’s newer roads have held up well enough, but some of the older roads, such as Pike Road where a county crew was plugging potholes Tuesday afternoon, have seen problems.
“The older roads that might have had some issues — this rain just exacerbates that,” Baggett said. “Asphalt is not impermeable, so the water seeps through and gets to the sub-base and finds weak spots. The traffic going down the road, with that weight on it, causes the asphalt to break down.”
Baggett added that the rain has slowed down some general work for the county’s road department, as the saturated soils can make it hard to use the equipment. In the meantime, the department has focused on putting down gravel on unpaved roads to help make them passable.
In Starkville, Mayor Lynn Spruill said the city has had crews out all over town making pothole repairs. Hot asphalt mix the city prefers to use for pothole repair isn’t available, but it’s using cold mix, which is typically used during colder months, in its stead.
“We’re still filling in potholes, and that’s the goal,” she said.
Despite the rain, Spruill said, an ongoing project along Lynn Lane to expand a turn lane at the intersection with Industrial Park Road and widen the intersection near the Sportsplex, remains on schedule. According to an update the city released on Friday, work on installing a concrete median curb on the east side of the Sportsplex intersection was expected to begin Wednesday and last through the end of the week.
Work will then move to install the base material for the turn lane on Industrial Park Road on the week of March 4, and once that’s completed, work will begin to repave the entire Lynn Lane corridor from Industrial Park Road to Louisville Street.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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