The Covington County Commission has renewed county engineer Lynn Ralls’ contract for another three years.

Ralls has been working for the county since 2000 when he was assistant engineer.

He said that the past three years he has been very busy.

“We are back building bridges,” Ralls said. “We bought a new crane. So, we are working towards building back our bridge program. One big thing is that we started leasing motor graders instead of buying them. That has saved us a lot of money in the county. We purchased new right of way equipment to get the brush off of our dirt roads and paved roads. We are gearing more of our work towards right of way stuff.”

Ralls said that it has been an honor serving the county.

“I am honored to serve in this capacity here,” Ralls said. “I really do enjoy helping these people. We are just so limited on our funds that I wish we could do more.”

One thing that Ralls is trying hard to push is the Rebuild Alabama Act.

“By August I actually have to have a list of all of the projects and the estimated costs,” Ralls said. “The act is still a far cry from what we need. Like I said before, it takes about $10 million just to keep up. So, we are still $9 million in the hole, but it is something.”

Looking forward, Ralls said that there are several projects that he is working on.

“We are fixing to build five bridges in the national forest,” Ralls said. “We have two on Giles Road, two on Falco Road and one on Sanders Road. We just finished our FEMA Bridge over on 331 in Opp. We are trying to finish our 15-flood event by January. It is really never-ending. We are going to start a surface pavement preservation project on Straughn School Road, which will stretch for 7.5 miles. If we can save it now, then we are looking at saving a lot of money down the road.”