For another drainage structure and road restoration in Bulloch County, the one on G.W. Oliver Road, engineers have planned, and FEMA agreed to help fund, construction of a bridge where there was only a set of seven big culvert pipes before.
The head of the county government's Engineering Office recently said that the G.W. Oliver project could go out for construction bids later this month. That would make an August 2026 construction start date possible, with completion targeted for August 2027.
At that rate, two similar-size bridge-building projects — one the reconstruction of the bridge at Dry Branch on Cypress Lake Road and the other the first-time construction of the bridge on G.W. Oliver Road — will be underway at the same time.
"We are literally on the same schedule: June construction letting, July approval and execution by the Board (of Commissioners) and then an August kickoff for construction," said County Engineer Ron Nelson, "and the two bridges are very, very similar in size; their spans are very, very similar. So they share a lot of similarities."
The bridges, designed by two different engineering firms, won't be exactly the same, having different substructures, he noted.
Project comparison
Like the culvert and road restoration project at Hood Pond and Watering Hole Branch on Country Club Road, where construction began in May, the need for the G.W. Oliver project was caused by stormwater washouts starting with a declared disaster. Tropical Storm Debby in early August 2024 started the problem in both of those cases.
So the G.W. Oliver restoration also qualified for the reimbursement funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a smaller share from the Georgia EMA.
That makes those two projects different in another aspect from the planned but yet-to-begin bridge reconstruction on Cypress Lake Road. The old bridge being replaced there was damaged in a vehicle crash and did not qualify for FEMA funding, but the county had state grant money available.
Interviewed in late May, Nelson provided an update on G.W. Oliver and a couple of smaller projects, along with timeline estimates for the Country Club and Cypress Lake projects (as described in a Herald story last week).
G.W. Oliver Road connects to Sinkhole Road in the southeastern part of the county. It's the last paved road to the left before Georgia Highway 46. The flooding and washout occurred where G.W. Oliver Road crosses Little Lotts Creek.
The drainage structure "was damaged beyond repair and qualified by FEMA for a bridge replacement, or actually we're doing not a bridge replacement but building a new bridge," Nelson said. "We're actually going to the remove the existing structures that are there — seven 72-inch diameter reinforced concrete pipes. It's a very large area as far as water coming through."
The roadway from about 700 feet east of the Sinkhole Road intersection to about 3,300 feet west of G.W. Oliver Spur Road was first closed from Aug. 6, 2024, because of damage from Tropical Storm Debby. The road was reopened but closed again in November 2024 after further downpours.
"The road just continued to fail," Nelson said. "It had a lot of scour on the upstream side and the downstream side, and ultimately the road just caved in."
A portion of the pavement collapsed from one edge to well past the center line, exposing the jumble of separated and broken, six-feet-tall concrete pipes.
So the road segment has now been closed, continuously, for more than 18 months.
Plans & funding
The Bulloch County Board of Commissioners in July 2025 approved a $424,500 contract with Kimley-Horn and Associates for design and engineering services for the G.W. Oliver restoration. Including that cost as well as the eventual construction expense, this could be a nearly $3 million project, Nelson said last year.
FEMA has since approved a cost projection up to $2,313,701. With U.S. taxpayer funds, the federal agency will reimburse the county for up to 75% of documented costs up to that amount, while state money through GEMA would reimburse for another 10%. That leaves Bulloch County to pay the remaining 15% of the FEMA-authorized cost, plus any overage, from its Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST.
The maximum federal contribution would be over $1.7 million, Nelson noted.
Right of way secured
"Coincidentally, that (project) has tracked along a very similar timeframe as Cypress Lake Road," Nelson had said. "In this case the plans are done, the right of way (acquisition) has been completed satisfactorily. We had donations upstream and donations downstream, but very minimal impact to anybody's property. It's all under water; it's in the creek area."
The county's ability to obtain the additional right of way on G.W. Oliver Road through donations from landowners was another difference from the Cypress Lake Road bridge project. There, the county recently filed an eminent domain claim to obtain a small parcel by forced sale at a court-determined price.
Finding "very reasonable property owners" on G.W. Oliver Road, the county still had some administrative costs paid to JMT for handling the process and filing right of way deeds and easements, Nelson said. The county government retains Johnson, Mirmman and Thompson, or JMT, for right of way services on various projects.
Like the Cypress Lake Road bridge work, the G.W. Oliver project also requires permission from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for any effects on wetlands, he noted. But that was before he cited the forecast timeline of events from the June 2026 let for construction bids through to August 2027 completion.