Pierce County Commissioners approved a resolution of support for a proposed perimeter road around Waycross.
The board approved the resolution supporting the project at their regular monthly meeting last Tuesday night.
Brantley and Ware Counties have also passed similar resolutions.
The next meeting of the three commissions to discuss plans is scheduled for Monday, December 1 at 10 a.m. in the second floor conference room of the Ware County Administration Building.
Local governments have resurrected the proposed bypass project in recent months, but the Georgia Department of Transportation would not commit to reopening the proposal unless all three governments passed a resolution in support of the plan.
The DOT spent over a dozen years working on the earlier idea, which was declared dead after public opposition torpedoed the plan.
Conservative estimates put the cost at over $200 million now.
County Chairman Neal Bennett said Pierce County’s support of the plan does not require any funding and the plan is not set in stone.
The new proposed perimeter road would relieve congestion through the city by providing an alternate route for big trucks.
As it stands now, the perimeter road would run through all three counties and would be built in phases.
County Manager Raphel Maddox stressed the proposal is just that — a proposal — and there will be changes before plans are finalized.
The east bypass route would begin at Lairsey Crossing and would utilize Midway Church Road. It would include a new roadway and bridges across the Satilla River, crossing in to extreme western Brantley County coming out on U.S. Highway 82 near Woodard Chapel Church. The road would continue and link up with U.S. 1 near Aycock Road in Ware County.
A west bypass road would utilize Hacklebarney and Cason Road and skirt Yellow Bluff with a new bridge across the river to Jamestown and then cross the U.S. 1 bypass and U.S. 1 main route west of the Waycross-Ware County Airport.
It would also encircle Waycross to the south below CSX’s Rice Yard.
The original project was killed in 2015 in the face of 62 percent public opposition to the proposal. Estimate for construction of just the east bypass route at that time was $65 million.
