ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Board of Commissioners awarded Shelly and Sands Inc. a $522,588 bid for the asphalt resurfacing of Crescent and Emerson roads.

The award comes this week at the recommendation of county Engineer Terry Lively, whose estimate for the project was $509,408. Lively added that a couple years ago, he applied for a grant through the Local Roads Oil and Shale program of the Ohio Department of Transportation that he was able to secure.

“We were successful in receiving a half a million dollar grant to do this project,” Lively said.

He added that the remaining cost will be paid for by the Engineers Motor Vehicle License and Gasoline Tax funds.

The Local Roads Oil and Shale program is an initiative through ODOT that funds roadway repairs within villages and municipalities as well as county and township roads in Carroll, Columbiana, Noble, Belmont, Monroe, Jefferson, Harrison, Guernsey and Tuscarawas counties that are not currently covered by a road use maintenance agreement, or RUMA, with a gas and oil production company. The program has a $2.5 million annual limit with a $500,000 per project limit.

According to ODOT’s website, the Local Roads Oil and Shale program provides economic support for infrastructure repairs in counties, townships, cities and villages impacted by increased vehicular truck traffic from oil and gas production.

Lively said the county must comply with ODOT’s requirements for the grant, such as an inspection, and then turn over the paperwork from the inspection to ODOT.

“They have oversight over that, since it’s state funds, but that’s a good project for us, and that will be kicking off soon,” he said.

Meanwhile, Commissioner J.P. Dutton made a motion to enter into a RUMA with Gulfport Appalachia LLC that took effect immediately. The agreement is for water transfer activity over 1.4 miles of Pipe Creek Road and 1.5 miles of Mt. Victory Road and a bridge on Township Road 129 at the Harley water transfer station.

Dutton added that no bond is needed by the county engineer for the project.

He also made a motion to enter into a RUMA with Blue Racer Midstream LLC, effective immediately, for pipeline activities on 0.25 miles of Pipe Creek Road and Mt. Victory Road at the Yankee Pipe Creek Pipeline.

Dutton noted that Bond No. 238281 for $1,500,000 on file will be used for this agreement.

The board approved both motions.

Lively said the RUMAs are pretty standard due to the amount of activity throughout the county from oil and gas work.

“The activity throughout the county is continuing, it’s never stopped. It’s slowed down at times, but this is normal, run of the mill stuff. As far as RUMAs go, it just takes some time and effort on our part to look at those roads and make sure that there haven’t been any damages that we need to have corrected. It’s pretty rare that we do, but we have to go through the process anyway,” he said.

Dutton added that residents will frequently ask him if the activity of oil and gas companies within the county has stopped. He said he replies that the activity fluctuates from time to time but has never ceased during his time in office.

“We probably get more calls from residents about trucks on roads that they don’t belong on and don’t have room on. And we’re trying to figure out who’s doing that to get that stopped. In fact, that’s probably a bigger headache than the ones that actually give room to run the roads that we allow them on,” Lively said.