Roads
Recycle center’s 3-day closure will speed repaving
It will take just three days to repair and repave the road to Georgetown County’s busiest recycling center. But only if the center is closed for those days.
“Hopefully, we can get in there and get it done,” said Ray Funnye, the county’s director of Public Services.
The $205,255 project on Grate Avenue at Pawleys Island received funding this week from the County Transportation Committee. The money comes from a portion of the state gas tax that is returned to counties for road projects.
“You probably need a Sherman tank to get down there,” Tom Marchant, who chairs the transportation committee, said. “I had a bunch of calls about that, so I hope it can move along pretty quickly.”
Although Funnye is in charge of the county’s solid waste collection as well as road projects, he needed approval from County Administrator Sel Hemingway to close the center while the work is done. With that in hand, the work could start in March.
If the center isn’t closed, the contractor estimated it would take a couple of weeks to do the
work, Funnye said.
Hemingway said he didn’t see that the work could be done any other way and that he supported Funnye’s idea.
His proposal is to close the recycling center from Tuesday through Thursday. The crumbling intersection of Grate Avenue and Petigru Drive will be dug up and replaced. The remaining .3 mile of Grate will be resurfaced.
“We would ask people, just for these three days, to reduce, reuse and recycle,” Funnye said.
Extra staff will be assigned to the Murrells Inlet recycling center while the Pawleys center is closed, he added.
Once the dates are set, signs will be posted to let the public know of the closure, Funnye said.
The county also considered setting up temporary trash collection in the Pawleys Island area during the closing, but Funnye said that isn’t practical because there would be no way to compact the trash.
Grate Avenue was also considered for a sidewalk or pedestrian path, but that plan was dropped after meetings with residents. The paving project doesn’t include widening the oak-lined road. It will maintain access for residents while the work is carried out. “We can handle that,” Funnye said, but recycling center traffic would lead to delays in the work.
The county has several other road projects planned for the area including resurfacing of Blue Stem Drive between Highway 17 and Kings River Road, Shipmaster Avenue and Watersedge Drive in Pawleys Retreat and Brookside Drive in Murrells Inlet.
It also plans to fill and seal cracks on other roads to extend the time before repaving. Those include the Bayfield and Coral Bay neighborhoods in Murrells Inlet, the Cypress Point neighborhood in Litchfield and Waccamaw Trace at North Litchfield.
