The State of Mississippi is spending over $212 million to expand a hurricane evacuation route for residents along the Gulf Coast.
Contractor W.G. Yates and Sons was brought on to construct the new Highway 57 project. Approximately 10 miles in length, it will essentially become the new route in Jackson County to head north for residents along the Gulf Coast during a tropical storm or hurricane.
The new bypass — which turns a two-lane highway into a four-lane getaway route — will offer better safety for drivers, ease congestion, and create new business opportunities along Highway 57, also known as Vancleave, Mississippi’s “Main Street.”
Funded in part with just over $80 million in formula funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the project began construction in March 2023 and has an expected completion date of August 2027.
According to the U.S. census, threats of climate change have not stopped the Mississippi coastline’s population from growing. Three of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast counties, including Harrison, Jackson, and Hancock all grew and became more diverse between 2010 and 2020, and that population swell is continuing to grow.
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“During COVID, there were quite a bit of people that moved to a lot of places along the Gulf, and a lot of places in the Gulf of Mexico, and of course Florida. I think we saw some of that in Mississippi just because the beach market here is a lot more affordable in those areas,” said Blake Southward, Project Executive, W.G. Yates Construction.
Many southeastern cities and counties are facing the fact that rapid development has made them more vulnerable to hurricanes, storms, and tidal flooding caused by sea level rise.
All of the bridges within the project are new — not replacements nor rehabilitations. Although there is not anything unusual in the bridge plans or designs, the quantity of the structures needed is what poses the greatest challenge for the team.
“The biggest thing with bridge work is just literally getting them off of the ground,” Southward said. “We really made an effort to start on those as soon as we could because they were instrumental aspects of our baseline schedule that we used to bid the job. They are really the critical path of the project.”
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Five bridges have already been completed out of the 13 planned. Several of the bridges, ranging in length from 202 feet to 1,379 feet, are overpasses for the new highway, and several others are being built across bodies of water and creeks that run through the footprint of the project.
“All are poured in place bridges,” Southward said. “So we get the piling driven, we get the caps poured, we get beams set, and we put forms on the beams, and then we pour the concrete across the bridge — and all of that is done in place.”
“You would think that this is a huge dirt project, and it is a good size. There's not a lot of jobs that have 3 million yards of material on them,” he added. “But I think the key is to understand that the bridges are our critical path. Had we not stuck with making a commitment to the longest lead time work, the whole job would have suffered.”
Southward and his team recognized early on that the project’s 13 new bridges were an impending challenge and needed to be tackled first.
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“I tend to think of the ‘Rock, Stone, Sand’ allegory,” Southward said. “You have a glass jar, and the big rocks go in first, followed by the pebbles, then the sand, then the water. The metaphor being that if you start with putting sand into the jar, you will not have room for the rocks or the pebbles. You need to take care of the critical, big items first. So, that’s easy to say, and hard to do, but that's what we've been able to do out here, and that's helped us to stay on schedule and have a successful job.”
Southward said it is important to understand the sensitivity of wetland areas prior to beginning a job, and that will affect the overall project approach. He considers first if an area is prone to greater erosion and if tropical weather affects the land.
“When you're working around wetlands, you have to be very mindful to make sure that you don't not get any silt, or any dirt, or any chemicals in those wetlands or in any bodies of water,” Southward said. “At these bridge sites in particular, we have taken extreme measures to make sure that we mitigate those risks — that we don't have any silt, or any materials, get into those waterways or water systems.”
Through erosion control methods, the team utilized geotextile fabric, a large amount of riprap, and sediment control stone. Southward’s team purchased a hydro seeder, allowing them to grass areas that were not very large, but were close in proximity to some of the “Waters of the State,” or areas that are impacted by wetlands mitigation that the state did.
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“There's just not much elevation difference between us and gulf,” Southward said. “But when you're building a big job like this where you have a lot of areas where you're replacing material and you're raising the grade of the new roadway much higher than the existing roadway, then just by putting material in and raising the elevation, you have a greater chance of creating erosion.”
The new roadway will be opened in phases, with two new lanes along the south half of the project opening in 2025. Traffic will be shifted to the new southbound lanes as the existing highway is demolished for construction of the new northbound lanes to begin. Then, drivers will use two of the new interchanges that are being constructed.
The team is currently working on portions of phase one and phase two. The team is working in the station range and will work on the northern station range next. The phase two traffic switch is scheduled for the summer of 2025.
Southward said that some of the work is being performed by skilled Mississippi subcontractors, including heavy civil contractors Key Constructors (headquartered in Madison, Mississippi), who have built some of the bridges for the project, as well as Hall’s Construction out of New Albany, Mississippi, and Warren Paving out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
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“Key Constructors built some of the bridges for us, and they've been great to work with,” Southward said. “Hall’s Construction worked on the box culverts, and Warren Paving is our asphalt subcontractor. They are out of Mississippi as well, and they've been a great sub to work with. They're doing all of the asphalt paving, and they are also supplying a lot of limestone aggregates for us.”
Southward also mentioned drill shaft contractor A.H. Beck out of San Antonio, Texas. “We've got a good relationship with them, and they've done a really good job,” he said.
“This has been a good job. It's definitely had its challenges, they all do,” Southward said. “But when you do the things that are going to take the most time first, you're usually successful. I'm proud of the whole team for making a commitment to understanding this, and making it happen.”
