The road of life can sometimes be a little bumpy, but Miss-Lou residents might have a rougher drive than others.

Concordia Parish roads, for example, have been undergoing a facelift, officials say, but it takes some time.

Tommy and Loyce January live on Roy Kemp Road in Monterey.

“There are holes in it and you have to zigzag through the road to avoid tearing the rear end off of your vehicle just to get to (Louisiana) 565,” Loyce said.

“I’ve lived there for 30 years,” Tommy said. “It’s been bad for years, but I’ve never seen it this bad. It’s ridiculous.”

Loyce said she sees work being done on the roads, but in off-years, she doesn’t notice much activity in the way of repairs.

“The road we live on is almost impassable,” Loyce said. “We pay taxes to the parish and the state, and I thought our taxes taken in are supposed to be taking care of the roads.”

Concordia Parish’s project

The roads are being taken care of, Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said. But road repair takes time and money.

Roughly 60 parish roads are on the list to be repaired in a lengthy repair project, one Ferrington said he hopes they will be finished by the end of this year.

“We’re very pleased with how our road system is going,” Ferrington said.

But it’s not all smooth pavement. In past months, the police jury has said it had problems with a contractor refusing to fix newly-paved, yet crumbling, roads.

Recently, the police jury has asked the contractor to present plans for correcting the situation.

“We’ve had some minor problems, but our engineers are taking care of that,” Ferrington said. “I think all in all, we’re very satisfied. We just want to make sure we get the quality of roads we want in the parish.”

Already, 32 roads stretching a total of 31 miles are being repaired and will be finished within the month if weather permits, he said.

And with good weather, Ferrington said he hopes the remaining 32 roads will be completed by December.

Concordia Parish’s road repairs are being funded by a 1.5-cent special sales tax and a 20-year bond.

“If the economy holds and the tax base continues to be good, we hope in a couple years we can add some roads to these (being repaired),” Ferrington said. “We’ll see what bids we get out of it.”

To build a road

Natchez residents, too, would like to see some of their roads a little smoother.

“Some are in sore need of road fixing, especially in my neighborhood,” said Melvin Lyles, who lives on Linden Drive. “Melrose, too.”

Larry Franklin lives in the county, but he drives in and out of Natchez frequently.

“Overall, they’re in pretty good shape,” Franklin said. “They could stand some work done. But I think they’re doing the best they can.”

Brad McSwain drives thousands of miles around southwest Mississippi and Louisiana each year, and he said his hometown has some of the bumpiest roads in the area.

“I think potholes are a major problem,” McSwain said. “If they get left alone, they get bigger and bigger. We’re the top pothole town.”

Fixing and constructing roads is more than slapping down a little asphalt, Natchez City Engineer David Gardner said. Some need to be completely rebuilt from scratch.

Building a road can take three years from start to finish, he said. First, an area has to be surveyed, then designs drawn up and approved. The engineering department has to find the funds to build the road before actual construction can start. And it takes roughly $700,000 to build a good-size road.

Once workers start laying a road, it takes careful planning, he said.

One of the most important aspects to consider is drainage.

“When it comes to roads, water is your enemy,” Gardner said. “The faster you can get water away from the street, the longer its lifespan.”

Water can erode asphalt and deteriorate a road pretty quickly, he said.

A good road is designed to slope down from the middle so water drains off it. Gravel is laid under the asphalt to give moisture a way out, and pipes are placed next to the road to collect the water and drain it away.

One of the reasons some Natchez roads are in poor condition is that tough standards, like requiring drainage and a good road foundation, were not in place when developers laid some streets.

One example, Gardner said, is Sherwood Drive. The road was built without a solid road base, or foundation, so there was no chance it would hold up for a long period of time.

The best fix for a road like Sherwood Drive is to rebuild it from scratch, Gardner said.

“If you overlay (a layer of asphalt), three years later it needs it again,” Gardner said. “At $50 a foot, that adds up.”

After four overlays, just patching it would add up to more than it would cost to rebuild the road, roughly $175 a foot.

“We’d need to do it right,” he said. “Once you do it right, you’ve got a good street, and you’re not going to have to touch it for years.”

The price of a nice drive

But even then, asphalt has an average life span of only seven to 10 years, he said. Some of Natchez’s other streets haven’t been repaved in 25 years.

And the reason is money.

There are two ways to pay for street repair, Gardner said: city money and grants.

Only certain streets in the city, main thoroughfares, qualify for state money, he said. Even then, most of the time the city has to come up with match money for grants. The rest, like residential streets, have to be paid for by city money.

And the city doesn’t have enough funds to make all the needed repairs right now, Mayor Phillip West said.

“(The roads) are rough because we haven’t had enough revenues to upgrade our streets and roads, especially in our neighborhood areas,” West said.

The city had an estimate done recently to find out how much it would cost to improve all the streets that needed it.

The total came to $15 million, West said.

“Now, we’re determining which streets are in the worst conditions,” he said.

The streets in gravest need of repair and are most traveled make the top of the list, Gardner said.

Union Street and Homochitto Street are two streets that will likely be first priority to fix, he said. Fortunately, those qualify as main arteries and will hopefully be paid for with state funds, he said.

Just this week, West and a handful of aldermen met with officials from the Mississippi Department of Transportation and legislators to find ways to increase the state help Natchez roads receive.

“I think we had a good meeting,” West said. “We did come up with a game plan to try to get things done. We came up with a couple options.”

West wouldn’t give specifics, but he said he was optimistic.

Meanwhile, Natchez residents will have to put up with potholes a little longer.