Brown Circle in Columbia County is one of the road projects Mabus Brothers Construction failed to complete before going bankrupt.A Georgia county is looking at a few incomplete road projects that were already paid for after an Augusta construction company filed for bankruptcy.
According to the Augusta Chronicle, Mabus Brothers Construction filed for the Chapter 7 Bankruptcy on May 2 while there still a few incomplete or shoddily done projects under contract with Columbia County.
While two of the projects only need a few minor actions to get them up to code, a third project on Brown Circle was left in disarray.
“You can drive the road, don’t get me wrong. It’s just not going to last. There are parts that are already starting to fail. We’ve had to go out and do some temporary patching on it, but it has alligatored extremely badly in certain locations and some of the raised edge is crumbling,” Columbia County Engineering Services Director Matt Schlachter said.
“… We had a core sample done that showed the asphalt was thinner than what we specified, and the rock under the asphalt was not up to the specs that we asked for. We knew all this and we told them all this and they were going to fix it.”
But then Mabus filed for bankruptcy, leaving the future of the project in doubt. The county paid the company $249,108 to do the project, but Schlachter said it’s going to cost upwards $236,000 to get the road up to standard.
Columbia County had a performance bond from United States Surety Company on the contract with Mabus, and the county’s attorney said they would attempt to press the bond company to get the situation resolved.
