After Hurricane Delta hit Habersham County in October of 2020, the damage New Liberty Road in Clarkesville sustained left it unsafe for traffic. In December, construction to the road began, and on Tuesday, Mar. 23, the road was opened to traffic once again. Habersham County officials met on Mar. 26 to celebrate New Liberty Road’s reopening and the hard work put in to make the road safe for Habersham County citizens once again.
The drainage pipe on New Liberty Road was “in severe disrepair,” according to Habersham County Commissioner Bruce Palmer when it was inspected after Hurricane Delta, and just three days after the inspection, the pipe had collapsed. The major project took over three months of work and cost $616,560. Habersham County received a grant from the Georgia Department of Transportation of $590,000 to cover most of the costs.
“I’d like to thank everybody [for their] patience who lived in this area for the detour,” said County Manager Phil Sutton. “I’m sure that added a lot of time to people’s daily traffic. I appreciate the Sheriff’s department for helping field calls and help them direct traffic onto the detour, it’s a big task to close this section of road for the several months that it took.”
The metal pipe has been replaced with a much larger concrete pipe that should keep the road’s structural integrity during natural disasters for years to come.
“Hopefully this will be a permanent fix,” said Civil Designer Jason Smith of JM Smith Engineering. “The pipe there before was a metal pipe, and metal rusts over time. You can do some things to make the metal last longer, but it does [rust]. This should be a permanent solution. New Liberty [Road] shouldn’t have to be closed because of this ever again.”
