House Committee Meets to Discuss Flood Recovery

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Columbia, S. C. (WOLO) — On Thursday, a House committee met to discuss the flood recovery efforts across the state. According to South Carolina Department of Transportation officials the number of road closures is down 85% with only 83 roads and bridges still closed. Secretary Christy Hall said SCDOT is participating in 2 federal programs to help fund repairs, but any improvements that do not meet the programs qualifications will need to be covered by the state. “We are literally having to go site by site to the repairs that were done and determine which one of the categories it would fall under,” explained Hall. Legislatures also discussed whether or not the states roads would have held up better in the floods if the roads funding bill would’ve passed last session. “I think if the House bill that we passed last year had become a law and funding had started to come in then I think we could’ve avoided some of the problems we saw,” said Rep. Chip Limehouse. However, Secretary Hall said she is not sure if it would’ve made a difference. “This is a storm of historic impact and even some of our brand new roads weren’t even able to hold up to this size event,” said Hall. Hall said she hopes to have a rough estimate of the total cost to repair roads by the end of November.