Hazardous roads fixed in Winston County

CRANE HILL Ala. ( WIAT ) — Viewers in Winston County called CBS 42’s Your Voice Your Station team concerned about roads they once called a public safety hazard . Now, they’re finally feeling a sense of relief.

That’s because James Kinsman and his neighbors just got two brand new county roads – 4006 and 4009.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Kinsman said. “It’s no longer Fallujah. Yeah, it’s not Fallujah anymore. We’re ecstatic.”

Last year, Smith Lake residents had to dodge massive potholes to get to and from their homes. Some even had to drive on the shoulders of the roads to protect their cars and tires.

There’s still some gravel on top, but now the ride is a lot smoother.

“It was really a public safety concern because if you had to call a first responder it was going to take a long time for them to get to you because they had to avoid everything,” Kinsman said.

Kinsman and his neighbors are thankful for the hard work of county officials who helped with the project. District 1 Commissioner Rutger Hyche led the way.

“Everything just fell into place, and we were able to do County Road 4006 and 4009,” Hyche said.

Because the roads had gotten so bad, Hyche had crews strip the roads down to gravel until they qualified for a $250,000 grant from Rebuild Alabama funds.

“You have a process you have to go through and with this project and the other Rebuild projects that we have been able to finish this year in Winston County, we realized that we are so short-staffed on manpower we don’t have the manpower to do many more of these in house,” Hyche said.

However, the project is not complete yet. There is still some loose gravel on top of the road. Officials are waiting for a nice dousing of rain and then they’ll sweep the streets and repaint the lines.

“After we finish up with the striping pretty much all of that’s going to be eaten up,” Hyche said. “Without that grant, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Kinsman said it was important for their voices to be heard in a positive way.

“It’s easy to get mad and say things and be disparaging, but really when you come together as a community and you work together as a community and you have your voice heard as a community, people hear you,” Kinsman said.

The group effort took the residents, county and state officials to pull it off.

“They all pushed for this grant to go through and I’m very grateful for that,” Hyche said.

Because road crews did the project in-house, Hyche said they were able to get about six miles of work done. This was about a third of the price originally anticipated for the project on the Rebuild Alabama website .

Hyche said he is looking at other ways to help generate revenue to keep up with the county roads better.

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