SENECA — Oconee County Council’s Transportation Committee this week recommended requesting $400,000 for road and bridge repair projects from the state-regulated County Transportation Fund program.

If funding is approved, Bennettsville Road in Salem would undergo repairs estimated to cost $100,000, while Jenkins Bridge in Westminster, one of the oldest bridges in the county, would get a $300,000 makeover.

The Transportation Committee of Chairman Joel Thrift and members Paul Corbeil and Wayne McCall voted to recommend both projects. Funding from the 63-year-old program comes from a 2.66-cent user fee on gasoline sales that are deposited in the state’s County Transportation Fund and allocated based on a county’s land area, population and rural road mileage.

Thrift said if the C-Funds are not used in a year, they revert back to the state general fund.

“I want to make sure we have projects,” Thrift said. “There’s no need to double-dip taxpayers’ money. It behooves us to use the C-Funds.”

County Council is focused on finding out the status of road and bridge projects after it was discovered earlier this year that more than $1.4 million earmarked for bridges and culverts was never spent. Money for such projects has been accumulating in the Capital Projects Fund since fiscal year 2005-06.

Interim County Administrator Kendra Brown said Wednesday that County Council still has to decide what to do with some $6.6 million left unspent that had been earmarked for capital projects, including upgrades to roads and bridges.

According to the state Department of Transportation, C-Funds may be used for construction, maintenance or improvements on the state highway system and county roads, bridge projects and street and traffic signs.

During Tuesday night’s Transportation Committee meeting, Public Works Director Mack Kelly also reported on the damage caused by recent flooding.

Kelly said the weather flooded 23 roads that had to be cleared of trees and debris. He said crews were still waiting for water to recede from Camp Road in Walhalla, Crystal Lake Road and Whitewater Lake Road in the Salem area and Land Bridge Road in Mountain Rest.

Thrift acknowledged the long hours put in by workers to get the roads back in shape.

“It wasn’t as bad here as it could have been,” he said.

A good deal of the flooding event took place on national forest land in the northern parts of the county and not in populated areas.