The Ohio Department of Transportation announced a construction update for Scioto County recently, which included three major roadways in the county for summer.
ODOT’s projects include State Route 823, which begun June 9 between U.S. 23 and U.S. 52, and has shut down one lane during the project that has an estimated completion of June 20; U.S. 52, between Brouses Run Road and Careys Run Pond Creek Road, which began work on May 19 and is expected to be completed this summer; State Route 335, for a bridge replacement project between Lucasville Minford Road and Lyons Road that started on March 25, closing traffic in both directions until this fall.
Scioto County Engineer Darren LeBrun said that there is much more work being organized through his office as well.
A large vehicle for his development includes the Countywide Paving Program.
“It’s usually pretty aggressive,” LeBrun explained. “We have most of the townships within the county, the Village of New Boston, South Webster, and Portsmouth all participating; it truly is county-wide in its impact.”
The program was implemented when LeBrun took office and has paved 747 roads to date and the 2025 paving season will raise that accomplishment to over 800.
“That’s something we track every detail you can imagine, but it is our main summer focus, and it does a lot of good,” LeBrun claimed.
The Shelly Company won the bid to complete the work this summer at $3.95 million, which includes asphalt, milling, water valve work, sewer lid adjustment, roadway stripping and more.
LeBrun’s office continues addressing damage from the storm season as well, with two major roads closed to date, which includes Feurt Hill and Clinton Furnace Road.
Feurt Hill is currently under design. With high traffic counts for that road, we got design work underway immediately. Our initial estimate was $3 million dollars. We have a $2.5 million emergency grant to help offset some of that cost,” LeBrun explained. “Our construction plans should be done at the end of this month and then we will hit the street after accepting bids. Our goal is to be done by Thanksgiving, but the uncertainty is securing
the steel for the roadway project to reinforce the 1,000-foot slip. I think this is the largest repair since I’ve been engineer.”
LeBrun said that there are a lot of projects his office, ODOT, and other local governments are working on for the summer maintenance schedule and he believes progress is moving forward nicely.
“We have a couple bridge projects coming up. One is on Pond Road, and another is on Stoney Run Road. Those projects are through the CAO Program, a federal fund project. We are working on the planning and bidding process this summer for work to begin next summer. We have a resurfacing project on Ohio River Road, near Lowes, which will be completed this summer. We have improvements with that with resurfacing and paving. Through the countywide program, as I said, we have many roads we are doing there. We have a CGB project for draining in the Village of Rarden which we will be bidding out later this year,” LeBrun said. “Overall, we have a busy construction schedule ahead. We are aggressive with seeking grant funding, most of our design work is done in house, aside from Feurt Hill, but I’m happy with the work we have with the funding and grant dollars we have. We are dedicated to improving roadway conditions in Scioto County.”