Delayed road repair turns into 6-month detour

HOLLYWOOD —For the last six months, the only public road into the Rantowles Shores neighborhood has been impassable. Residents reach their homes via a one-mile detour that includes a private dirt road.

At first it was only an annoyance. The constant coat of dust or mud on his car caused Mike Musgrove to stop washing it.

Then it became frightening. Scottie Warren recalls feeling helpless as she stood on one side of the huge hole in Waldon Road watching an ambulance that was trying to reach a neighbor, who had broken a hip, on the other side of the hole. Warren said EMS has gotten lost twice trying to reach her neighborhood in recent months.

Now some residents are wondering if the promised help will ever come. "We just feel like we're being neglected," said Marilyn Musgrove.

"Everybody comes, everybody looks, and we never see them again," Warren said.

The edge of Waldon Road began eroding where it crosses a canal in September, according to Marilyn Musgrove. An orange cone was placed in the hole, and then dirt was brought in to fill it. But the hole kept growing.

In late October, the road collapsed due to "a major failure" in a 36-inch pipe that ran underneath, wrote J. Michael Black, district maintenance engineer for S.C. Department of Transportation, in a letter to state Rep. Robert Brown. The pipe was intended to allow tidal flow under the road, which intersects Savannah Highway in Hollywood.

SCDOT coordinated with a nearby property owner to allow the 25 or so residents use of a dirt road called Messervy as long as it takes to make repairs, Black said this week.

The six months Waldon Road has been impassable "is a long period of time," but efforts have been continuous, Black said. The process involves a lot of parties, and "we really wanted to get the people a permanent fix."

It isn't the first time Waldon Road has failed nearby residents.

Several said the road was closed for a couple months after it washed out in 1998, and for several months in 1988. At that time, residents were told the pipe being installed was a temporary fix and that a bridge would be installed when funds were secured.

Marilyn Musgrove said it was obvious to residents the pipe wasn't large enough to move the rushing water under the street.

This time SCDOT planned to install a 6-foot-by-6-foot box culvert under the road to move water, collecting contractors' bids in early March, Black said.

Later the department learned the environmental impact of blocking tidal flow long enough to install the culvert was too great.

Now another pipe, this one 84 inches in diameter, is proposed.

In his letter to Brown, Black said the project would be presented to the SCDOT Commission at its April meeting. He told Marilyn Musgrove the same, she said.

But it wasn't. Black recently said not enough info had been prepared, and the project will now go before the commission at its next meeting, slated for mid-May. The project should be completed by mid-June.

Brown said he was surprised at the condition of the roadway when he visited the site. The situation should be considered an emergency, particularly with the number of elderly residents who could need medical attention.

"I would have been happy if they had taken some emergency measure to cut through the bureaucratic tape to get this road repaired in a much faster manner," he said, adding that this is a prime example of why more money is needed for road maintenance in rural Charleston County.

Hollywood Mayor Jacquelyn Heyward said the town was responsive in trying to find Rantowles Shores residents the appropriate agency to fix the problem, but hasn't been able to get much information out of the state. "They indicated they realized the problem was there and it was a funding issue, and they would attend to it in priority order."

"They could have put the pipe in six months ago," Mike Musgrove said. "They built the Arthur Ravenel bridge as quick as they're building this."