Commissioners say storm damage is ‘like dirty dishes’ that just keep coming

Torrential rainstorms are starting to feel like a weekly occurrence in Ozark County, Ozark County’s commissioners said Monday at their regular meeting. The storm on Thursday, May 31, that brought rain, lightning, wind and hail, was apparently strongest in the Tecumseh and Caulfield areas, according to Eastern District Commissioner Gary Collins.
“We got a lot of water over the weekend, too much water,” Collins said. Five Road-and-Bridge Department graders were running Friday and Saturday on Ozark County’s east side, where some areas saw as much as 6 inches of rain fall in an hour. Water covered parts of PP Highway and Highway 160 in some places, and the roadside ditches were full to the brim late Thursday night, Collins said.
County Road 328, known locally as Bill Warren Road, and Country Roads 326, 314 and 349 were some of the worst hit. Boulders and debris washed out of ditches and into roadways, and several slabs were damaged, Collins said, adding, “You couldn’t get a car through for the boulders” in some areas.
The west side roads fared better in this last storm, but repairs had to be made at Center Point and Locust, and many culverts throughout the county are in need of work, said Western District Commissioner Greg Donley.
As of Monday, the only east-side road still closed was County Road 540 near Tecumseh where the storm had taken out a 15-foot box culvert; Collins said he hoped to have the road opened later this week.
On the west side of the county, Haskins Ford remains closed due to the high water level on Bull Shoals Lake.
While the cost of repairing damage from the last couple of rainstorms is hard to gauge, Donley estimated it will take a month’s worth of work to complete the repairs, with equipment and labor costs totaling around $150,000. So far the cost of materials for repairs has been fairly low, since most of the work entails removing debris and reclaiming material that washed out of place, commissioners said.
But having to respond to frequent storm damage has set the county back on routine maintenance such as patching potholes. “I hope before the Fourth [of July] to at least get the potholes filled; then we can patch over that,” Donley said. The commissioners agreed that keeping up with the weather has been one of their biggest challenges. “It’s just like dirty dishes,” said Donley of the storm damage. “It doesn’t ever end. It just keeps coming.”
The commissioners also commented on Missouri’s new governor, Mike Parsons, following the resignation Friday of former governor Eric Greitens. “He’s from south central Missouri, and he knows the Ozarks. I think he’s very approachable,” said Presiding Commissioner John Turner.