Recent rains leave county roads reeling

The Lavaca County Commissioners’ Court met in its regular meeting Monday morning and discussed county road damages experienced last week resulting from the nine-plus inches of total rain.

Commissioner Edward Pustka said every gravel road in Precinct 1 has gotten ruts and trenches from the rain

In trying to make them passable, Pustka said, “We have been, ‘I guess you could call it putting a band aid on them.’ We’re trying to make the roads a little smoother. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We know most people appreciate it and we thank them for their patience.”

Pustka said hopefully, before long, they’ll get them up to standard.

He said they have four culvert projects that need to be addressed as well.

Commissioner Wayne Faircloth said they had road damages as well.

“We have damage that will take the rest of the year at least to repair,” Faircloth said

Faircloth talked about the flooding that takes place in the county road ditches referring to ditch that may normally be 12-inches wide and can expand to 40-foot wide when receiving rains like last week.

“We’re not in the drainage business and need some help,” Faircloth said.

Precinct 3 commissioner Kenny Siegel said they experienced flooding at all low water crossings in the precinct.

“At the low water crossing on CR 302 we’re looking at between $25 to $35 thousand worth of damages,” Siegel said.

Precinct 4 commissioner Dennis W. Kocian said his precinct roads also had damages

“The main problem we have is that the ditches are not deep enough mainly due to the rightsof-way not being wide enough,” Kocian said. “We don’t have 60- to 70-foot rights-of-way. We’re lucky to maintain up 30- to 40-foot of road and you can’t make ditches to get the runoff.”

Kocian said when rain events occur like last week it’s going to happen, and they’re going to take care of roads and culverts and make it happen.

“It takes a lot of dollars and will slow us up on projects that we have planned for the rest of the year,” Kocian said. “We’re just going to have to go forward and do the best that we can.