The Marion County Board of Supervisors is meeting this week in the Marion County Chancery Courtroom to adhere to social distancing guidelines, and County Engineer Jeff Dungan provided an update on projects Tuesday.
Work on replacing the bridges at Lampton-Hilltop, Shiloh-Firetower and New Hope roads has been stalled due to the coronavirus. This has also affected the Columbia-Purvis Road bridge that is in the Columbia city limits. The production is lagging behind due to employees being sick and operating with less workers.
Across the state Tuesday, 8,207 cases have been confirmed with 76 in Marion County, including seven deaths.
In other county projects, the new roof on the library has been completed and is now awaiting the final inspection, Dungan said. The next step is for the architect, Steve Cox, to present to the board the plans for the interior of the building. No time has been appointed for the presentation.
Dungan said the airport got a $30,000 COVID-19 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration for operations.
Dungan said Warren and Warren Asphalt should be ready to begin the paving of the aprons on the bridges beginning June 1. Work will begin first in Beat 1 and Beat 5. Once the work is completed in those two districts, Dungan said they will decide then the order of the remaining districts.
All of the districts have bond money to help pay for the paving. Beat 2, whose supervisor is John Moree, has the least amount due to the reconstruction of two bridges on Williamsburg Road.
“On a positive note, you have wrestled that bear, and you have made a lot of progress. You had no choice: Without bridges, you can’t get to where you need to go,” Dungan said regarding all the road and bridge work that county has been dealing with.
Plans are being worked on to replace the bridges on Pine Burr and Johnson roads, Dungan advised.
While FEMA has not made a declaration yet regarding Marion County and the EF-4 tornado on April 19, discussion was held regarding the clean up. Dungan is estimating the cost of the clean up of debris and tree removal will be somewhere between $750,000 to $1 million. Dungan said about half of the cost is going be removing damaged trees that are still standing. Some of that work, he said, will involve a bucket truck.
If the county is approved as a disaster zone, federal funds will help pay some of those costs. n
Jeff Davis and other counties to the north have received disaster declarations for the April 12 tornado.
The board reviewed the monitor proposals on Monday they have received from Thompson Consultant Services, DebrisTech and Witt O’Brien. The board took the proposals under advisement pending receiving the declaration from FEMA.
Eli Turnage appeared before the board on Monday to discuss the emergency management director’s job. Turnage said while he knows the job is unavailable at the moment, he wanted to put his name out there just in case. Aaron Greer is the emergency management director.
