County staff provided an update on Brannen Pond Road repairs during Tuesday’s county commission meeting.
Brannen Pond Road was the most severely damaged road in Bulloch County after the rains from the remnants of Hurricane Idalia hit the area in August of 2023. The road has been closed to passing traffic since the storm, prompting questions in continuity regarding the county’s progress.
County Engineer Brad Deal
County Engineer Brad Deal said he was asked to give an update by Commissioner Jappy Stringer.
“We get the question a lot ‘about ‘why did not we not just go back in and immediately put the road back in place the way that it was and open the road back up to traffic?’ The reason is we got into looking at doing that and we noticed the drainage was severely undersized for the amount of water that comes from Upper Black Creek through that crossing. We had the concern of somebody coming around that sharp curve in the dark, for example, and water’s running over the road and the road’s getting washed away and it’s not a situation we wanted to happen again so we knew that we needed to upgrade the drainage there. In talking to FEMA, we knew that we had a very good opportunity to get reimbursed for any kind of improvements that we did so we thought it was a good time to pursue that course while the road was closed instead of spending roughly, I think we estimated $400,000 to put it back in place the way that it was with the high likelihood that we’d have some additional issue there. Around that time, we decided to hire Kimley Horn to do some hydrology analysis on what we could do that would not affect upstream and downstream and cause problems.“
Deal said the assistant county engineer has worked with coordinating with GEMA, FEMA, and Kimley Horn to ensure approval.
“We have a design for a box culvert that’s been approved by FEMA. They’ve also approved to reimburse the county. If you combine FEMA and FEMA, it’s about $570,000, which is roughly 85% of the construction costs, so we think that’s a real big win for the county,” Deal said. “We’re going to get a much better design and a much safer road and we’re going to get reimbursed for about 85% of the work.”
TIMELINE
- July 2024 – Working on bid documents, scheduled to go out on July 11
- August 2024 – Low bid presentation to commissioners in August (target first meeting)
- Fall 2024 – Construction to go on through the fall
- January 2025 – Looking at January completion date and re-opening of the road.
“The end result is we’re going to have a much better, safer design. It’s going to be able to handle a lot more draining than the existing culverts,” Deal said.
Comments from Public Works Director Dink Nesmith
Public Works Director Dink Nesmith added to Deal’s comments, saying the county engineers have done an exceptional job.
“That’s $570,000 coming back to Bulloch County that we wouldn’t have had. It takes time, but it’s looking out for taxpayer’s dollars,” Nesmith said. “It’s a very trying process, I don’t think everybody understands that, but we can’t afford to leave that money on the table.”
Watch the comments from Tuesday’s meeting
From December 2023:
