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By Shane Dunaway/The Selma Times-Journal & The Lowndes Signal

Construction efforts to repair a stretch of Broad Street south of Lowndes Academy will be completed by mid- to late-June, according to Lowndes County District 1 Commissioner Robert Harris.

Harris said the initial issue with the road involved water getting under the drainage pipe that ran under the road.

“We had a real large amount of rain during the time that it happened, and it caused the road to collapse,” he said. “We went back in there put new pipes and stuff in and got the road back up so it could be safe to travel through.”

Harris said what’s left to complete on the road is to reinstall a guard rail and resurface over the top of the road.

“When you put that much dirt and pack it down, you’ve got to wait until it settles down enough so it won’t keep causing any type of rutting of any type of sagging in it,” Harris said. “It needed a period of time, but we got it back up to where it’s safe to travel. We just have to have that waiting period so that we make sure when we resurface over the top of it, we won’t have to continue to keep doing it.”

He added while maintaining the road falls under the scope of the town of Lowndesboro’s responsibilities, the Commission takes care of it because the city doesn’t have the means to.

Harris said the wooden bridge attached to the walkway that runs parallel to the road belongs to Lowndesboro.  The bridge is currently impassable due to a missing section on the northern end.

Due to her travel, Lowndesboro Mayor Anne Spooner referred comment to Town Councilman Mark Callis, who said plans remain in place to rebuild the bridge, but it can’t be started until the road construction has been completed.

“The county hadn’t finished working under the bridge,” Callis said. “We’ve got the insurance that’s going to pay for the bridge, but we can’t rebuild the bridge until the county gets their part finished.”