Receiving Funds To Repair Roads And Bridges

OKTIBBEHA COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)-  For some people, the sound of an excavator being used to remove an old and worn out bridge may not be much, but for District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, it’s the sound of progress coming to Oktibbeha County.

For the past few days, crews have been hard at work replacing two bridges on Sun Creek Road.

“This first bridge is a smaller bridge and will probably be done in a couple of months, and then the other bridge is a longer and larger bridge which will probably take a little bit longer,” said David Harrelson, with Pritchard Engineering, Inc.

“These were two of our older bridges in the county and they started to become a little bit unsafe,” said Howard, Oktibbeha County District 3 Supervisor. “We were fortunate that we were able to get the funding sources to be able to replace these two bridges.”

Finding the money to repair worn out roads and bridges can often times be a financial burden on city and county governments.

The cost to replace the two bridges in Howard’s district adds up to more than one million dollars.

“When you start talking about having to come up with that type of money, that can be a strain on a county,” said Howard.

Now municipalities no longer have to carry that burden alone because state lawmakers are offering up some help.

State lawmakers have allocated $80 million grossed from the lottery money to go towards repairing roads and bridges throughout the state.

“That’s going to be very beneficial to the counties that have shortfalls in their budget when it comes to road repairs because road repairs are an expensive undertaking,” Howard expressed.

Howard said knowing they have this type of help available for infrastructure repairs will go a long way in helping their dollars stretch.

“We’re excited about the money that the lottery is bringing in,” the supervisor said. “When we start to budget for bridge replacements and road repairs, that will allow us to look a little bit further and make more repairs in the near future.”

Howard said they received funds from the state’s emergency bridge repair money to repair four bridges in the county.

Oktibbeha County received more than $2 million in state lawmakers to make these repairs.