Pate presents spoil dirt usage report

CHIPLEY – Washington County Commissioner Joel Pate presented an analysis of spoil dirt usage earlier this week. A copy was provided to the Washington County News prior to Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners’ meeting.

Pate said he wrote the report to bring attention to the high cost of some of the practices of the county regarding spoil dirt. Spoil dirt is defined as dirt removed from roadside ditches, culvert work and excess from construction sites.

“A very large amount of these materials should be considered reusable material because it is being dispensed to various sites throughout the county,” Pate wrote. Spoil dirt consists of clean sand, clay or muck.

Pate said that County policies are “constantly ignored” or ignored “the majority of the time,” with a perception that if someone gets “a right of entry” that dirt could be hauled up private driveways, even from County pits.

“Rights of entry for work done on [any] private drive may put us in the position of accepting them for county maintenance,” Pate wrote. “This is a practice that needs to stop.”

Pate also added up the amount of spoil dirt give away that was charged against the public works budget. For example, from Feb. 1 to March 31 $10,267 in 87 loads was charged against the public works budget based on tracking reports.

Pate said that not all of the dirt distributed was accounted for. “Some 14 requests for spoil/dirt did not have a resolution or cost statement involved,” he wrote. A standard “load” of dirt is $118 and one 60-load trip not on the reports came to an estimated $7,080.

“Based on this analysis it would appear that the county is missing a great opportunity to get better results for out taxpayers’ money,” Pate wrote. He recommended changing policies, but wrote that, “This will cause some problem with the segment of our county that uses the services at great cost to the rest of the county taxpayers.”