ROANE COUNTY, Tenn. — Gary Holder retired from the military after 27 years. He then moved to Roane County with his wife. He said the area's beauty captivated him, and he had family in the area.
While driving through Airport Road, the scenery overflows with nature — until drivers bump into a part that has been closed and recently reopened.
"I was in on the invasion of Baghdad when we went into Iraq after we dropped bombs on bridges and roads — it looked better than this," Holder said. "My first thought was worried for the folks who live up here. I have family who live up here. This road, is it stable? Is it not stable? It's a huge concern because you do care for people and especially your family who lives up here. This is a huge shortcut for them to get to work."
Dennis Ferguson, Roane County's road superintendent, said he brought engineers to help him find a way to reopen it. Ferguson said crews drilled and did several kinds of soil samples.
"I'm gonna ask them if I could rock this over here for a bypass and if I could fill this in to try to stabilize it," Ferguson said. "I put pipes in the ground for the water, to try to help. And they thought that that might help it. Ok. So we tried, but it didn't. More rain, more storms and stuff slid again. Got afraid of dangers, that it was unsafe. Because my obligation to the people of Roane County is to make sure that our roads are safe to drive on."
The problem isn't new and this is something he inherited from the previous superintendents. He said around 8 years ago, previous leaders looked into the cost of fully fixing the road. It totaled around $11 million.
With a limited budget, Ferguson decided to find an inexpensive way that cost the county around $5,000.
"Just the labor that I had in it for my guys, the labor of doing just, you know, small equipment work, Bobcat stuff," Ferguson said. "We come up and with the interaction with the company, LB Foster down in Loudon, they donated all of their material."
Brian Mullins is running as his opponent and said he disagrees with the way he was approaching Airport Road's issues. Mullins is an operations manager and owns a grading and excavating and utility company Siteworx LLC.
He said he believes the work done on Airport Road is a patchwork job that's unsafe for the community.
"I see that this road has been constructed using no industry standard," Mullins said. "I'm saying that because with my experience in road building, I have seen nothing that would indicate that any construction method that's been approved by any organization engineering firm, state of Tennessee or any local government has been followed."
Ferguson provided a letter from an engineering company from Nashville that approved the county reopening the road. He said he didn't think the rest of the road would slide and showed what he called the "bench of it."
A crack next to the "bench" is causing concerns for Mullins.
"I don't know of any engineering firm that would put a stamp of approval on that right there, they would be in fear of losing their license," Mullins said. "This crack is in addition to what has failed already. This is a new failure forming, you can see its vertical separation. It's about 2 inches. This road is technically sliding as we stand here."
Ferguson said his dad and uncle started a paving business in 1962 and that's where he gets his experience — by spending countless time paving the county roads and city roads. He said there isn't any amount of federal or state money that would help him fix this road.
As the current superintendent, Ferguson is responsible for around 650 miles of roads in Roane County and this is just one of them that needs repairs.
"Rain is very dangerous and it's powerful," Ferguson said. "And so it just slid out again. So, we come to the point like, what are we gonna do? And I come to the point of, 'Hey, we can't just open this up and it'd be unsafe. We've got to make sure this thing is safe.'"
Mullins questions where the rainwater goes and he said he's asked to see an environmental study for the road. In the meantime, Airport Road is being used by drivers and many locals feel it is safe to drive on.
Others said they prefer to take the longer route.
"I would feel safer driving on a blown-up Baghdad road than I would on this road," Holder said.