Free Republic

With $65 million in new money thanks to the state's BP settlement, the long-beleaguered U.S. 98 project in coastal Alabama has a new life, but officials are proceeding cautiously.It was nearly a decade ago when a previous U.S. 98 project was shut down amid lawsuits and accusations surrounding sediment from the construction site that ran off into the waterways supplying a majority of the Mobile region's drinking water."The job has been redesigned," said Vince Calametti, ALDOT's Southwest Region's chief engineer. "There was an environmental assessment, and it will have to be re-evaluated. It will be one of the first things...

According to the Alabama Department of Transportation says the I-22 Corridor X project is almost complete. According to ALDOT engineers, the project is in the cleanup phase, with the I-65 tie all but complete. "We don't have an exact time," ALDOT Engineer DeJarvis Leonard told WBRC Fox 6. "But we feel that based on the progress that's been made, by June, we should have traffic on the interchange and on the paving project." Engineers also said horses are regularly wandering around the construction and an owner hasn't been identified. Georgia-based Archer Western is the contractor for the $168 million project....

PINSON, Ala. -- At 8 a.m. on a Saturday, the rumble of bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment was already audible in Ardell Turner's modest home in this rural hamlet north of Birmingham. Not far away, they once mined coal. Now state and local leaders are seeking prosperity through one of the nation's largest and priciest road projects. On planners' maps, the Northern Beltline will be a 52-mile, six-lane interstate that will effectively complete a loop around Birmingham, Alabama's largest city. More than a half-century after the Beltline's conception, work on a small segment began last year within a mile of...