(March 26, 2008) -- The floods may be gone, but the damage is still here.
Roads in Bell County have had to undergo lots of repairs these past months, but about half of county's bridges still are in need of work, and the county is putting everything else on hold to fix them.
"This past summer's floods did cause some of the erosion damage that we're trying to correct now," said County Engineer Richard Macchi. "A lot of this is also just deferred maintenance that we've put off for years trying to get other things accomplished around the county."
The commissioner's court saw this coming last year, shortly after the rains stopped. It said the total flood damage wouldn't be known for some time.
Now that the floods are still showing their after effects, local bridges are priority number one.
"We're just moving these items to the top of the list," said Bell County Judge Jon Burrows. "Getting to them probably sooner than maybe we would normally but just on looking at it we need to do this first."
Of the 150 bridge structures in the county, about half of are in need of some type of work. One bridge in particular will be replaced next year.
Most of the repairs are mild in nature and aren't even noticeable to the average person driving by, but unless something is done now. The problems will only get worse.
"Then we would probably have to down grade other structures which is something we don't want to do," Macchi said.
Two bridges have already been down graded from unlimited use to no more than 36,000 pounds. However, no county bridge poses a threat to regular traffic. Bridges are state inspected every two years and detailed reports are kept on their condition.
"If necessary go beyond our routine maintenance to do special maintenance when the occasion arises and that's kind of what we're doing here," Burrows said.
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