Some people who live in Boone County are raising serious concerns about which roads are getting fixed on West Virginia's Roads to Prosperity program.
With thousands of West Virginians demanding their roads get fixed, it is surprising to hear complaining about repair plans but on Seng Creek in Boone County near Whitesville, people living nearby are puzzled to see the last bridge at the dead end of the hollow getting replaced before higher priority jobs.
The span provides access to a smaller wooded bridge that serves a dirt road with two houses on it but there are actually no homes on the far side of the bigger span.
It's really not a bridge to nowhere although there are no houses on a side of the bridge. There is an inactive coal mine where state residents already have spent a lot of tax dollars rescuing trespassers.
Even the four trespassers lost underground who required a massive search and rescue last December didn't use the bridge. Authorities said they entered elsewhere.
"I called the governor's office and talked to the guy in charge of funding for the Department of Transportation and he told me that it was on the Roads to Prosperity program and I said, I told him, 'Buddy, that makes it sound worse. There's nothing above the bridge. How's this $900,000 being spent on that bridge going to get you to prosperity? There's nothing there. He told me he would call me back. I never got a call back,'" said Robert Webb, who lives near the bridge.
The bridge is still getting done, but highway officials say the $915,000 estimate they gave to county officials was incorrect. The fix is about $600,000.
"You're right, there's very few house up in that area but during the planning stages of that project that mine was fairly active, I think and mines become active again. So, we are actually taking care of the bridge that you are talking about with pay-as-you-go dollars from the bonding proceeds," acting Commissioner of Highways Jimmy Wriston said.
Webb has his doubts.
"If they came here tomorrow and said they were going to open this back up, I can see them putting some priority on it, but there's nothing here. There's no plans that I've heard of about opening those coal mines up," Webb said.
Webb and Whitesville Mayor Fred Harless said the bridge carrying 5,000 vehicles a day on the other end of Seng Creek on Route 3 needs fixed now.
The DOH's Wriston said highways officials have "development issues with that one. There's a lot of utilities around that bridge right there. Probably a year ago, we received bids for that project and couldn't get all the utilities out of the way. So, we're in the process of getting rid of the utilities to construct the new bridge and it will go out again soon."
Gov. Jim Justice says he doesn't want to see any roads to nowhere built like he's seen in the past.
"We don't need to do that," Justice said at a previous news conference. "We just don't need to be making those kind of mistakes."
The head of hollow bridge on Seng Creek is not seen as one of those mistakes by highway officials.
"We're getting the input from the people on the ground down there, the people that know these roads and bridges and pipes and culverts best because they're out there working on them every day," Wriston said.
The estimated repair cost for the more heavily traveled bridge on Route 3 is $1.6 million.