OHATCHEE – Potholes and the patches that cover them are becoming costly for some residents on Rock Springs Road.

Angelia Hancock, a self-described homemaker, lives along Rock Springs Road with two daughters and her husband, who is on disability. She said traveling across the road’s surface cost her more than $300 in car repairs two weeks ago when she broke a water pump, tore a radiator hose and blew a tire on a family car.

"It's always the nicer road and the nicer communities that are getting paved. The country roads where the poor people live, it's like nobody cares," Hancock said. "I don't have the money to be making road repairs."

The county doesn’t have the money needed for the repairs either, said Calhoun County Engineer Brian Rosenbalm. He said bouts of snow and freezing winter weather caused road conditions along Rock Springs Road and on roads across the county to deteriorate this year.

“We had extensive damage county-wide,” Rosenbalm said. “I see roads as bad as Rock Springs in every district in our county.”

In February, the Calhoun County Commission designated about $600,000 of an existing road maintenance contract with Gadsden-based McCartney Construction to fix damage caused by the weather.

McCartney has already worked to correct problem areas of the five county districts and will soon make repairs in the Ohatchee area, Rosenbalm said.

Residents who live along Rock Springs Road said they’ve been told for years that the road would be repaired some time soon, but they say aside from patched potholes, nothing has been done. Calhoun County Commissioner Eli Henderson is receiving the bulk of their criticisms.

Ohatchee is part of his District 3. Henderson said the potholes will again be repatched prior to the start of school, but residents say patching sometimes makes the problem worse.

"They just throw it in and they don’t smooth it out," Hancock said. "You have parts of the road where you just have mounds."

“(Henderson) has been promising to pave it for 10 years,” said John Bryant. “It’s just gotten worse and worse.”

Bryant has lived along the road since 1992 in a mobile home that he shares with his girlfriend, Doris Riddlebower. Bryant and a handful of his neighbors said they feel their concerns are being neglected, but Henderson said he never promised the road would be repaved because the county simply can’t afford it.

“Sometimes the truth is tough, but I always tell them the truth. I’ve never told them I’m going to pave that road,” Henderson said.

It takes roughly $75,000 to pave one mile of county road. Henderson’s district has 316 miles of the approximate 1,000 miles of road maintained by the Calhoun County Highway Department.

His district receives about $1 million from revenue generated by a 2 percent county sales tax to repair roads in his district each year. At that rate, Henderson can repave about 14 miles of county roads, but there are still other road repairs needed.

He said Six Foot Road, Hellamanard Road, a portion of Rock Springs Road and several others have been repaired or repaved with the money this year. Henderson said more road work will be done in the Ohatchee area in the coming months.

Henderson said his District 3, J.D. Hess’ District 4, and Rudy Abbot’s District 5 receive more of that money than Robert Downing and James “Pappy” Dunn, who oversee District 2 and District 1 respectively.

“The three of us get the bulk of the money because we have the most road,” Henderson said.

This year in Henderson’s district, those repairs are taking place throughout Ohatchee and even on parts of Rock Springs Road. But, residents who travel the patched parts of the road are not satisfied.

Timothy Pruitt lives in a small mobile home just past one of the worst patches of Rock Springs Road. He said he has been waiting for the road repair work take place on Rock Springs since he moved there 10 years ago. He is con-cerned that the road condition will add up to costly car repairs for him, too.

“We’re country folks,” Pruitt said. “We ain’t got no bunch of money. We just want the road fixed. This is not acceptable.”

Long-time resident Billy Brown said he can remember when the road was first paved in the 1960s. He said it was repaved about 20 years ago.

“It hasn’t changed much in a long time,” he said. “We don’t get nothing. They just come by here and wave.”

Contact staff writer Laura Johnson at 256-235-3544.