CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The costs of damages to West Virginia’s roads in the June 23 flood are nearing $55 million, according to new numbers from the state Department of Transportation.
Just more than six weeks after the storms that brought devastating flooding to parts of 12 Mountain State counties, total damages to roads and bridges was at $54.9 million in data released Friday, as more actual costs of repair work continued to replace previous estimates.
“That’s why we’re seeing it kind of fluctuate and they could continue to go up or it could go down a little bit. They’re changing from week to week,” said Carrie Jones, communications specialist for the West Virginia Department of Transportation, of the totals.
The top five counties on the list for damage were Kanawha County at $15.6 million, Clay County at $12.8 million, Greenbrier County at $7 million, Nicholas County at $6.8 million and Fayette County at $3.7 million.
Road damages in Webster County and Roane County were also in the millions of dollars.
Needed road repairs include roadway washouts, road slides and slips, damaged or clogged culverts, embankment and shoulder erosion, clogged ditches and trees and debris in roadways.
A bypass was in place along Route 4 in Corton, along the Elk River in northern Kanawha County, to allow traffic to pass through that area which was one of the many washed out by historically high water.
Bridges that are considered “total losses” are smaller spans: three in Clay County, three in Kanawha County, one in Fayette County, one in Greenbrier County and one in Nicholas County.
“The bridge damage that we are seeing here is not any massive type of bridge or structure and these are things that, you can see, we’ve put temporary bridges or a bypass in place in some of these areas,” Jones said.
At this point, the state Department of Transportation has received no reimbursements for road repairs from the federal government. Those reimbursements could be several months away, according to Jones.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency provides reimbursements of 75 percent of the costs of public disaster repair projects. West Virginia’s request for a 90 percent rate was still pending as of Friday morning.
In the flood zone and in other parts of West Virginia, flood repair road work has affected regular maintenance work.
“It has put us behind in some of the counties that volunteered to send crews,” said Jones.
“Now with school getting ready to start, a lot of people — we want to remind them — that we’re still doing flood damage, but bus routes for the next couple of weeks are going to be our priority to make sure that they’re in good shape.”