Many Wichita County roads are still full of cracks and potholes following the wettest month of record.

“We’ve had tremendous damage due to the flood. Water is not a friend of roads,” Wichita County precinct 3 commissioner Barry Mahler said.

Mahler says there are several spots where heavy rainfall leaves standing water over the roads, every time there is a major severe weather event.

“Standing water in the bar ditches, it creeps up under the base and makes them soft and allows the road to break down,” Mahler said.

That’s why at their meeting on Monday, the commissioners voted to purchase an excavator to help keep that water from standing and shore up the bar ditches to keep the water flowing instead of causing trouble for the road’s base layer underneath the driving surface.

“Over time, bar ditches have a tendency to silt in and they fill up. You have construction come along and you change the flow of the water and sometimes we don’t go back and repair that until you get into those situations and this gave us a good opportunity to find out where we need to do some work,” Mahler said.

He says they’re hoping to purchase the excavator within the next few days and start work on the damaged roadways as soon as possible.

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