Marla Jones, Managing Editor
FORT PAYNE, Ala.- (Full Video on Southern Torch Facebook) County Road 835, or as some know it, Old Highway 35 is completely finished. The DeKalb County Commission received the final report on the CR 835, at their regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday.
In February 2019, a large amount of rainfall caused damage to CR835 and it was forcibly closed after several slides made the road impassable.
After over three years of hard work by the DeKalb County Road Department, DeKalb County Engineer Ben Luther informed the Commission of the final numbers for the road project. The total project for CR 835 was 1,950 square feet of road repair. This repair is the biggest in-house project that the DeKalb County Road Department has ever attempted.
Before the project could ever get started, clean up of the old road surface was required. The excavation of the previous road entailed (2,999) triaxle dump truckloads. The removal of old asphalt pavement required (63) triaxle dump truck loads. The concrete rubble cleanup required (61) triaxle dump truck loads.
Luther informed the Commissioners that workers from the DeKalb County Road Department were digging up to 40’ deep from the bottom to the initial grade, at times.
The materials used on the project were as follows:
- Pit Run Shot Rock- 62,275.40 tons
- Oversize #1 -1,257.59 tons
- Rip Rap, Class 2-1,205.83 tons
- Coarse Aggregate #4- 469.38 tons
- Coarse Aggregate #5- 596.40 tons
- Coarse Aggregate #5-299.18 tons
- Crusher Run ¾ #610-6,997.30 tons
- Crusher Run 1 ½”-2,022.59 tons
- Dense Graded Base, Type A- 23.85 tons
- Erosion Control Blanket-130,100 square feet
The man-hours for the project were 11,452. The Employee Cost was $284,642.65. The equipment cost for the project was $833,547.18. The materials for the project were $1,228,838.29. The total cost for labor, equipment, and materials was $2,347,028.12
There were several contract items and incidentals involved in the project. They are as follows:
- Survey Services for right-of-way (ROW) acquisition- $400
- Phase 1 Cultural Resource Assessment- $9,990.49
- ROW acquisition- $260
- Soil Nail Retaining Wall- $263,865.01
- Paving, Guardrail, and Traffic Stripe- $324,387.61
The overall total cost of the County Road 835 was $2,945,931.23. This is an 80% federal and 20% local split that was paid for by Federal Highway Emergency Funds. The total funds returned to DeKalb County was $2,352,835.51. DeKalb County’s part of the project was $593,065.72
The DeKalb County Commissioners, and DeKalb County Engineer Ben Luther thanked all employees of the DeKalb County Road Department for the endless hours working on this project.
