By Jonathan Zweygardt
Hays Post

A group of Ellis County officials, including members of the county commission, got a chance to check out the current conditions of various roads and bridges throughout Ellis County Monday as part of a special commission meeting.

The group, led by interim Public Works Director Curt Hoffman got a tour some of the blacktop roads in the county and looked at approximately 12 different roads and/or bridges. Some are currently under construction, others need repair and may be candidates for future construction.

Among some of the roads and bridges the group reviewed Monday was the Highway 40 project, the bridge North of Ellis on 125th Avenue and Feedlot Road and the 230th and 55th Street Intersection.

Commission Chair Dean Haselhorst said there are a number of bridges throughout Ellis County that are in need of repair because they were build many decades ago.

“There are a lot of bridges in the county that were built in the ‘30’s that we’re going to have to look at ways to upgrade them,” Haselhorst said “They have served their live and now we are going to look at repair.”

He added that some of the bridges may need deck repairs, which he estimated will cost a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars per bridge. The county may be forced to close others that are beyond repair. The have also used an epoxy repair, which is a cheaper option. Haselhorst estimated the epoxy repair on most of the bridges would cost around $100,000 or less and would last between 10 and 15 years.

Many blacktop roads in the county are in similar shape, according to Haselhorst. He said in they may look into shortening the blacktop surface and turn them back into a rock/sand surface.

Haselhorst said they are looking for different funding sources for repairing some of the bridges. He also said they will have to set priorities for the projects when the commission sets the county budget. But they will get with the engineers and the public works department before making any changes.