THOMASVILLE — Elected officials, county staff and residents are ready for the upcoming start of a long overdue road project.

The Grady County Board of Commissioners approved a bid of $2,240,430.67 from Scruggs Company of Valdosta for the Old 179 South full-depth reclamation project at its Tuesday meeting.

“I’m tickled about it,” resident Claudette Collins, who lives on the road, said Thursday upon hearing the news. “I’ve lived here 40 years and this repair has definitely been needed for a long time.”

Of the bid amount, $691,000 will be paid via a state aid county contract, County Administrator Rusty Moye said. The rest will be funded through Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST, funds for roads and bridges/maintenance and repair.

Commissioner Elwyn Childs said the roadway runs through his district.

“I’m very appreciative to the state for participating with us to repave it,” he said. “The people in District One have been very patient with us. It is in real bad shape but I think the residents will be so proud of it once the project is complete.”

Four bids were received. Scruggs was the lowest; the highest bid was $2,502,390.98 from a Marietta-based company.

“We’ve been talking about this project for a long time and are finally seeing it come to fruition,” Moye said. “It is long overdue. The top cap of asphalt the state installed prior to deeding the road back to the county has really deteriorated beyond repair.”

It took so long to get the project to the bid stage — about five years — that the county had to change the repair process.

“At one point in time we were going to cap the existing road with rock and tar — a two-layer surface treatment — but the cap on the roadbed has come loose so bad that the tar and rock would not have adhered so we’ve had to go with a full-depth reclamation,” Moye said.

Yancey Maxwell, county superintendent of roads and bridges, explained the basics of the reclamation process.

“Machinery is used to grind up the pavement, then it is mixed into the road base and compacted down,” he said. “Then, the road is repaved.”

Maxwell said currently every time it rains, more of the road washes away and this creates numerous pot holes.

“It was probably paved in the 1970s — it used to be a state highway — and has not been resurfaced since,” he said. “We’ve done repairs, patched pot holes and those things, but it keeps deteriorating.

“With the rainy and freezing weather we’ve been having, there’s been a constant battle for last five years trying to keep it patched up. This reclamation is really the best way to fix it.”

Collins said driving along the road “makes you feel like something is wrong with your car.”

“You pull over and stop to make sure nothing is wrong,” she said. “It sounds like you’ve got a flat tire.”

It is a heavily-traveled road, Collins said, with motorist traveling to Tallahassee and other areas. She also said there are a lot of elderly persons who live along the road and school buses drive it regularly.

“My daughter-in-law drives daily to Tallahassee and parts are bad enough to make her car swerve,” Collins said. “I think there’s also been a lot of wrecks. From Whigham to Calvary, the further you go, the worse it gets.”

The resident hopes the lines on each side of the road will also be repainted and said this project will give her some peace of mind.

“The lines are hard to see in certain places and I know this repair would make my life and others who live on or drive on this road less complicated,” Collins said. “It will make the road safer.”

Maxwell is also glad to finally be moving forward with repaving the road.

“This is a new way to repair a road for us in Grady County but I’m glad to see something being done about this road,” he said. “I know the public is also glad to see something being done to it.”

Moye said, weather permitting, the project is expected to begin in March and take four months to complete. He also said motorist will still have access to the road.

“A stipulation in the contract is that the contractor maintain one lane open at all times,” he said. “There should be a flag man out there and that sort of thing.

“Old 179 is a heavily-traveled road by locals and those passing through Grady County so we will be pleased when we get through and see the final result.”