Cold, snowy weather might have slowed the progress, but by the middle of this week paving crews had begun to work on many spots in Columbia.
Late last year, the Board of Aldermen approved spending $174,000 to patch streets where water repairs had been made and areas littered with potholes.
Mayor Justin McKenzie said he was “proud of the progress being made on the street repairs.”
He said they had 27 places to fix on Gill Street and have finished that.
“This week, they’re going to get into other areas where they will do the milling and paving. They’re going to try and do base repairs,” the mayor said. “Church Street in front of Columbia High School and Owens Street in front of Jefferson Middle School had some really bad areas that we were able to address. We just completed work at the corner of Mayfield and Branton Avenue and on up Branton. Those run hand-in-hand because we had the school renovations taking place, which caused some of it and some of it was caused by broken water lines. It’s been repaired and it will be safer in the area for the band and all of the students who walk in the area.”
The city had also been busy with drainage issues from culverts and ditches to drains.
“We discovered a drain on Church Street that had been hidden for years,” McKenzie said. “At some point, the street had been widened and it was covered. It was eroding on the outside of the curb. We went in and broke up the existing curb and put a flush mount drain cover in and were able to make an improvement to the ramp on the sidewalk as well. It will improve the drainage.”
He said they weren’t able to locate exactly where the drain went because it was so old that it wasn’t on any of the maps the city had readily available. They followed the flow and discovered it came out in a dry creek north of Dale Street.
Crews were busy working along Sumrall Road near Marion General Hospital Tuesday.
“We are working to make some improvements for some of the runoff drainage around Sumrall Road,” McKenzie said. “There were some yards that were flooding out there and some residents had approached me about what we could do with it. To begin with it, we could open up the ditch, and that’s the first step we took. I’m thankful that Mark Carithers has taken time out of his day to come out and help with this.
“Everything that we’ve been doing besides the paving has been done with city crews in an effort to save the city money.”
Pictured Above: Mayor Justin McKenzie helps crews clear out ditches on Sumrall Road Tuesday. | Photo by Mark Rogers
