One Arkansas county fares better than others in stimulus money

Arkansas has 25 projects, including those six, that cost $1 million or more.

By TOM PARSONS
The Associated Press

7/9/2009

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Sebastian County is the big winner in the stimulus-money sweepstakes for Arkansas highways, with Pulaski County a distant second, federal figures show.

The federal Transportation Department lists 65 highway projects in Arkansas as guaranteed to get stimulus funding, with a total cost of $134,558,003. Sebastian County has two of the six projects that cost $10 million or more.

Those two projects — totaling $24,810,852 — both involve new construction on a north-south road east of Fort Smith, on land that was formerly part of Fort Chaffee and is being developed for commercial and industrial use. The highway being built, called the Chaffee Crossing, will eventually become part of Interstate 49, a major connector between Kansas City and Interstate 20 at Shreveport, La.

The other four projects that cost at least $10 million, as listed by the federal agency, are:

—Extension of U.S. 67 as an interstate-grade highway northeast of Newport for 9.89 miles in Lawrence County, south of Hoxie, $21,094,279.

—Initial work on revamping the exchange in west Little Rock where I-430 and I-630 intersect, to improve traffic flow, Pulaski County, $15,991,380.

—Upgrading U.S. 71 to interstate standards for 2.28 miles south of Doddridge in southern Miller County, $12,585,083.

—Widening of 4.1 miles of U.S. 167 south of Sheridan in Grant County to five lanes, $10,052,411.

Arkansas has 25 projects, including those six, that cost $1 million or more. They include a third job in Sebastian County — repaving of 2.74 miles of Arkansas 22 in Fort Smith, from I-540 to the east — at a cost of $1,095,726. That brings the county's total of stimulus-funded highway projects to $25,906,578.

Pulaski County also has a second stimulus-money project with a cost greater than $1 million — a job patching concrete on I-40 between I-30 and U.S. 67 in North Little Rock that brings the county's total to $17,055,159.

Craighead County, with Jonesboro at its heart, has the smallest project on the federal list: $83,737 for installation of a traffic light. Stimulus money is also going to another Craighead County project: $934,305 for concrete patching on U.S. 63 between Arkansas 226 and Arkansas 91 on Jonesboro's west side.

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