‘This is what our roads look like?’: Residents outside Lincoln frustrated over muddy mess

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Just outside of Lincoln city limits, some residents say they’re dealing with dangerous roads.

And they said the county hasn’t done anything about it.

A bridge at Arbor Road and 27th Street is all that separates a paved roadway and a mud pile.

Richard Welch, who lives on 27th, said the muddy road is a constant nuisance.

“This isn’t just because of the snow that we’ve had or the rain we’ve had,” he said. “We deal with this year-round.”

Welch said he and his neighbors have reached out on multiple occasions to the Lancaster County Engineer’s Office to ask that more gravel be put down on the road.

But he said it hasn’t done much good.

A Channel 8 reporter called the county engineer on Monday but has not yet received a response.

Welch said it’s even more frustrating given that they live so close to city limits, just north of Interstate 80.

“We’re less than a mile from the concrete over there, and you can’t even tell,” he said. “It’s like we’re out in the middle of nowhere on a minimum maintenance road.”

But Welch said they are on a road that is supposed to be maintained.

His neighbor, Gary Walker, said 27th gets a lot of traffic, which makes it worse.

“We’re paying all these taxes that we pay, and this is what our roads look like?” Walker said.

Semitrailers, dump trucks and garbage trucks tear up the road and leave potholes, according to Walker.

The Raymond Volunteer Fire Department has a station not even half a mile down the road.

Fire Chief Nick Monnier said it’s not the only dangerous area.

“It’s worse here, but it’s similar in other parts of our jurisdiction for Raymond Volunteer Fire Department,” he said. “We can’t seem to get the snow off the road, so when it melts, the bottom of the road just kind of falls out.”

In the past month, an ambulance got stuck, as well as a volunteer’s vehicle.

Monnier said it was because the road hadn’t been cleared, so it was covered in snow and mud.

Just two days after the ambulance was stuck, a garage caught fire across the road from the fire station.

But with the road impassable, Monnier said firefighters were having trouble getting there.

He said a local farmer helped plow the road.

Without the farmer’s help, he said they “wouldn’t have made it to that fire.”

Monnier said when the mud is thick, it can pull you into the ditch.

He said if you have to drive on a muddy county road, slow down and drive in the middle where it’s packed down.