Bamberg County Council members are hopeful that passing a resolution of support for a long awaited county highway project agreed on unanimously two years ago with official at (LSCOG) will speed up the construction process with the purchase of right of-ways beginning so.

Bamberg County Council Chairman Clair P. Guess III, said at council’s February 2,meeting that a meeting was held two years ago with officials of the Lower Savannah Council of Governments (LSCOG) requesting that the corridor between Bamberg and Denmark be considered for widening in that it has “the highest measured traffic count of any segment of highway 78 between Aiken and Dorchester-substantially higher, and the vote was unanimous.”

“Somewhere between the cup and the lip, something slipped, and it’s been stagnant every since. Although there are funds available for beginning that project,” Guess said.

“We are exhausted and disgusted, when the stimulus bill proposal came from DOT (Department of Transportation) there was not one cotton pick-in thing in Bamberg County, two years ago this was approved by Lower Savannah Council of Governments (LSCOG) as the priority project, we have no representation at DOT, there’s nothing happening at DOT, we’re tired of it and something is going to happen,” Guess said.

“It’s ridiculous to think that we are represented in congress by the fourth most powerful man in Washington D.C., and he’s behind us on this project. We got to have some action, this is silly, we’re setting around here with billions of dollars getting ready to be spent, we’ve got no representation, we got no project, we’ve got $2 million dollars let’s spend it, we can’t sit here another 10 years and do nothing,” Chairman Guess told Tinsley.

“We’ve already started that process and made a formal request, I hate to say the project has been stagnant,” Jennifer Tinsley, Director of Planning and Information Technology at (LSCOG) said. Tinsley stated that “we have been doing some work, an advance project planning report was completed, field work, cost estimate, and preliminary wetlands elimination was done.” Some funding was forwarded because all wasn’t spent.

Tinsley stated that the issue is that we have $2 million dollars of a $35 million dollar project. “Obviously that’s just a drop in the bucket, we have no promise or potential of construction funds for that.”

Tinsley said the concern was that spending $2 million dollars on the environmental process, which would be the first leg of the project, and would expire in two years, and would have to be done again, was not a good option and would be a waste of Bamberg County taxpayers money, when the potential funding can come through.

She stated that some of the problem is (DOT's) way of thinking as it goes in phases looking at projects that are fully funded first, noting that “we didn’t see the economic stimulus package coming in December, or we would’ve had a ready project,” Tinsley said.

Councilmember Chris Wilson, who is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee representing Bamberg County as part of the Rural Transportation and Planning, stated that the $2million dollars the county received was primarily for planning and environmental and was not enough for that.

“The rub on this thing is DOT looks at fully funded projects first,” Wilson said. “We’re not a fully funded project as of this point.”

Wilson stated that he learned in discussions with officials that the purchase of right-of-ways can begin now. “What needs to happen from here is this council needs to stay behind and meet with new project manager Kevin Gant at the (DOT) because he is the person responsible for moving it forward, and stay behind Wayne Rogers and officials at (LSCOG) and make sure they push (DOT).

“The money was there, we need to push forward now,” Councilmember the Rev. Isaiah Odom said. “We need to at least take care of the part of the highway from Bamberg to Denmark if no more,” Odom said, noting that it was said that Williston SC. was reluctant to be a part of the widening effort.

“Would it be helpful if the county passed a resolution to put it on record to ask the LSCOG and DOT to move the process forward, to be passed out at council’s February meeting and sent to Wayne Rogers, and Jennifer Tinsley at LSCOG and Kevin Gant at DOT," Wilson said.

Council members authorized County Administrator Rose Dobson-Elliott to draw up a resolution on the highway 78 widening project to be approved at council’s February meeting.