By RAY WYCHE

Regardless of how efficient he is or how hard he works, Drew Cox knows he’ll never finish his task.

Cox is the N.C. Department of Transportation’s district engineer for Columbus and Bladen counties, charged with keeping the roads in good repair. It’s a job that has no end; there are always holes to patch, road shoulders to be mowed, roadbeds to be drained and bridges to be inspected and kept in good order.

A native of Guideway who now lives in Whiteville, Cox, 36, is a graduate of Nakina High School and N.C. State University in civil engineering. He has a total of 15 years experience with DOT, including four years in the Fayetteville Division office.

In his two-county district, Cox is responsible for the upkeep of 2,125 miles of roads, 174 miles of which are unpaved. Keeping the paved surfaces in good repair is only a small part of the job; there are rights-of-ways to be mowed and kept clean, fallen trees to remove, and there’s always the problem of getting water off the road and shoulders, not an easy task in Cox’s low-lying, swamp crossed domain.

“Maintenance is the big thing,” he says. “Mowing, guard rail repairs, signs and drainage.”

When new interchanges for some intersections on U.S. 74-76 are in the planning stages, as is now the case at Evergreen and Bolton, Cox and his staff have a hand in the planning process.

“We’ll have some input. We’ll look at the maintenance aspects of the design.”

Like most government agencies, Cox must also keep a close eye on how the money is spent. Budgetary concerns figure in all decisions made at the District 3 office near Brunswick.

“Everything we do is done with limited funds,” Cox says. Budgetary restrictions have made his job more demanding; he must see that his money is spent on projects that do the most good for the most people. A tightening of budgets throughout state agencies in recent years has required more careful study of projects on the DOT district level.

“We are not able to do what we used to do,” he says.

Another source of concern connected with road building and road maintenance, Cox says, is the restriction mandated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that limit construction and repair activities in areas the Corps considers wetlands.

“We run into problems with wetlands. It slows us down,” he says, particularly when it comes to digging ditches to help better drain roadbeds in marshy areas of the two counties.

Maintenance work dealing with getting water off the road and roadbeds is also hampered by beaver dams that retard the water flow in natural watercourses, and by careless loggers who leave timber debris damming ditches and streams that normally would remove water from roads.

“We can’t get into the swamps at all,” Cox says. “If it forces us to go off the right-of-way, we have to justify it.” An engineer on the DOT division staff in Fayetteville is an expert in the many rules pertaining to wetlands that the Corps has in place, and is available for advice any time Cox calls.

”He helps us understand what limits we have. We make sure we comply,” Cox says.

As funds become available, DOT is steadily paving the dirt roads that once were predominant in the county. Deciding which road will be paved first is based on a point system that considers the number of residences and businesses along the road and the number of miles of the road used by school busses.

“Folks have to donate the right-of-way,” Cox says of the paving projects. “The only way we can skip a road in the order (to be paved) is for someone not to donate a right-of-way,” he says.

Cox adds that although the initial cost of paving a dirt road can be considerable, the expense is justifiable in the long run. Unpaved roads in the counties are now so far apart that the operator of the motor grader that maintains these roads spends considerable “deadheading” or non-productive time traveling from job to job.

Maintenance work at the Brunswick DOT facility can get frantic when a hurricane hits the county.

“We have a plan in place. The first thing we do is assess where the damage is,” Cox says.

The plan calls for opening the main highways—U.S. 74-76, U.S. 701, N.C. 87, and N.C. 211—as soon as possible.

“We clear the major routes first, and we close some roads for safety. We call for help if we need it. We can move people very quickly. But safety is most important,” Cox says of the sometimes dangerous work of cleaning up after a hurricane.

Cox has high praise for local volunteer fire departments and for the N.C. Forest Service for their assistance in the many tasks necessary after a big storm.

“They do a lot of things to help us,” he says, mainly removing downed trees from roadways.

But if a tree falls across an electrical power line, Cox and his men stand aside until a utility company crew arrives on the scene and takes care of the situation. It’s a safety measure.

“We have no way of knowing if the (electrical) line is alive,” he says.