More than 30 people showed their concern for the alleged lack of maintenance of the gravel roads in the county during a meeting Wednesday morning of the Mississippi County Quorum Court's Roads and Bridges Committee.
Greg Alexander of East County Road 356, presented a list of 14 questions he wanted to ask of justices, County Judge Steve McGuire and Richard Sills, road department superintendent.
The questions ranged from the amount of funding spent on roads to how often the roads are graded.
McGuire told Alexander that roads are graded as often as possible, but with 1,200 miles of roads in the county and only 12 graders, it is difficult to get all roads graded as often as residents wish.
Plus, weather conditions have to be right so that graders can properly care for roads without causing further damage. "We don't grade mud," McGuire said.
All county resources are distributed as "equitably as possible," the judge said.
"We try to treat all citizens the same," McGuire said. "We try to ensure that every road is graded on a regular basis."
Employees of the road department document each task, such as which county roads are graded and how much material is placed on the roads, McGuire said.
Alexander and other citizens in attendance continued to name specific roads that need attention. Alexander said County Road 314 is either "a solid washout or a rub board," he said.
Several people accused the road department employees of incompetence, saying the roads were not graded the right way.
"The roads are graded into a gully so that the road holds water," one man said.
One woman said all the gravel on the roads is graded to the outside edges, forming levees on the sides so that water is retained in the roadway and cannot run off.
Another woman said that the roadside ditches are being filled with gravel because the graders are pushing gravel too far to the sides of the road. "The water has no where to go," she said.
County Road Superintendent Richard Sills said the county' s roads are being damaged faster than the road department can keep up with repairs and maintenance.
"None of these roads were designed for the heavy loads they have now," he said.
Justice Michael Gammill, chairman of the Roads and Bridges Committee, explained that the roads were constructed long before heavy trucks and tractors were created. Heavy equipment is a large percentage of the traffic now, which damages the base of the road, he said.
"It has to do with the road base and Mother Nature," he said. "You can't fight Mother Nature."
McGuire said the road department is trying new methods all the time to try to make road upkeep better.
"We have tried what people have told us," he said. "It hasn't been as successful as we had hoped. We're trying to improve it."
Some residents complain because the county puts a product known as "slag" on the roads instead of gravel. The slag is a byproduct of steel production and is more readily available to the county.
"We can't find good red clay gravel anymore," McGuire said. The last time the county used red clay gravel was eight to 10 years ago, the judge said.
"The quality of the clay gravel is bad," he said. The nearest gravel pits are in Poinsett and Greene counties, but those counties are traveling to Mississippi County to get slag for their roads as well, McGuire said.
The road department is stockpiling materials for the roads so that the product is available when needed.
Sills explained that most of the maintenance on the gravel roads is done in the summer because of the weather. "We bring the sides of the road to the center in the summer," he said. "We can't do it now because it creates mud."
After the crowd vacated the meeting, members of the committee approved a request from the city of Dyess to name a section of State Highway 297 as the "Johnny Cash Highway."