ARDMORE – A bid to crush concrete for Carter County is expected to save money and repurpose miles of recycled roadway. The Carter County Commission on Monday approved about $56,000 to crush tons of concrete rather than use county personnel and resources for the task.

Commissioner Joe David McReynolds said that the price of the bid is lower than total costs associated with hauling concrete to and from a local crusher. Commissioner Berry Lee-Brinkman said the concrete comes from road work on US-70 and estimated that the bid for $7 per ton would save the county roughly 50%.

“We received all the concrete off of the highway 70 project that they’re out there doing, and we’re going to crush that and use that material,” Lee-Brinkman said. “So we have a lot of fuel savings, a lot of wear-and-tear and labor savings.”

Commissioners expect to cut costs by having the concrete crushed and stored on-site rather than haul it to a crusher, pay about $8 per ton for crushing, then haul the crushed concrete back to a county barn for storage.

“It’s a whole lot cheaper than what crusher runs cost us,” McReynolds added. Commissioners said that about 8,000 tons of concrete are to be crushed and stored for use in District 3.

Commissioners also declared several items from the District 2 barn as surplus. Commissioner Bill Baker said staff recently performed an inventory and found the items to be junk. He told commissioners that the items would be disposed of rather than auctioned.

In other business, the Carter County Commission on Monday:

• approved three road crossing permits for Continental Resources and two road crossing permits for Citation Oil and Gas;
• approved a floodplain permit for Mac Carver for produced water pipeline;
• approved shared time transfer from three county employees to one county employee;
• transferred appropriations from County General Sheriff M&O fund to County General Sheriff Capital Outlay fund;
• approved county officers’ reports;
• approved requisitions and purchase orders for County Highway, General Government, and all cash accounts.