Residents and travelers who once used on a daily basis County Road 8 that spans a considerable distance between Highway 528 and Highway 15 of the county will in the foreseeable future be able to use the road once again.
The roadway, which holds four closed bridges, three in Beat Five and one in Beat One, is among 163 road and bridge projects around the state that has received approval and funding through an Emergency Road and Bridge Repair Fund (ERBRF). The Mississippi Transportation Commission announced two weeks ago $250 million for all of the projects. Jasper County is set to receive $3,688,140 for the County Road 8 project.
Southern District Transportation Commissioner Tom King and District 34 Senator Juan Barnett met with Beat One Supervisor Eddie Helms and Beat Five Supervisor Curtis Gray, Sr. at one of the closed bridges on County Road 8 Friday afternoon.
“The reason we are here today is to personally thank Commissioner King for considering Jasper County in part of the $250 million that the Senate passed in our last session for bridge repairs across the state of Mississippi. For Jasper County to be awarded almost $4 million of $250 million was really significant for us,” said Barnett. “We have three bridges right here that are out, and these bridges connected East and West Jasper. A lot of our residents have been inconvenienced by this. Again, we want to thank Commissioner King for listening to us and recognizing the need to allocate monies to fix these bridges.”
King said the entirety of the projects throughout the state was a joint effort between legislators, the Mississippi Department of Transportation and local officials. He noted that Jasper County has bridges that are closed and need to be re-opened.
“Jasper County is very important. It’s a rural county, and in doing that, they needed it. They had bridges that were closed that need to be repaired,” he explained. “The process was the people, community leaders, MDOT, and certainly our county supervisors and city people getting behind the legislature to encourage them that we needed money for our rural counties for bridges. It’s all about economic development. It affected the agriculture industry tremendously, and that’s our number one industry. They finally saw the light, and they got behind it and did it. There is still a need, and as long as there is a need, we need to correct it and make it right. And, our first priority, all of us here, is safety. Safety is what it is all about; safety of the traveling public.”
Barnett explained the next phase in the beginnings to start the bridge and road repair work will start with paperwork at the county level that will make its way to the state.
“We are looking in the next several months for all the paperwork and everything to be returned back to the supervisors where they can go ahead and advertise for the bids and for the work to get started on it. It’s been two years already, and we regret that, but we’ve worked hard to try and get some monies to give our communities some relief, especially our rural communities,” he said. “It takes working with the leadership in Jackson, and it takes working with MDOT and Commissioner King, and all of those people to get them to realize how important, as Commissioner King said, our safety is and being able for our industry to be able to move its product, whether it be timber or whether it be poultry. That’s one of the biggest things that we have here in Jasper County, and we certainly don’t want to hinder anyone from being able to get their goods from the forest or the farm to where they need to get it to.”
Gray also noted how important it was for the county to receive the funding for the project, in that without it, funding for the repairs would have fallen on the backs of taxpayers in two districts of the county.
“It’s very important, especially to this county, since the oil revenue is down and the price of oil is down, and it affects the whole county. That’s why these bridges have been closed so long. As the Board of Supervisors, we held off passing a bond issue because we didn’t want to put $4 million on the backs of taxpayers in two districts, which would be Districts One and Five. We kept praying and asking the Lord to bless us, and he did.”
In all, two hundred total bridge projects throughout the state are set to take place with the total $250 million funding. Of those 200 bridges restricting travel, 99 are closed and 91 have weight limit restrictions. The bridges on County Road 8 in Jasper County will be replaced, and the roadway will be overlaid.