Between detours while the Highway 94 bridge was closed and increased traffic due to the large number of temporary employees working the Callaway Nuclear Plant's outage, several county roads took a beating this summer and fall.
Wendy Barnhart, who lives on County Road 447, said that roadway in particular has suffered a lot of damage.
"It's like potholes beyond belief," Barnhart said.
In a letter to the editor, she said that one quarter-mile stretch of the road is "wash boarded out" and that subsequent freezing and thawing "has made for a mud pit and a washed out pothole of a mess. Nowhere on the road is there not a pothole." Barnhart wrote that she was not impressed with the way the county maintains its roads, noting that county grading crews often leaves large rocks in the middle of the road and at one point the road was graded in the rain, leaving it in even worse condition.
Susan Johns, who also lives on County Road 447, agreed that it is in pretty rough condition, saying that "it certainly could use some grading."
"There's just certain times of year it gets really bad," Johns said. "We've definitely had years where it gets this bad."