GREEN COVE SPRINGS – A push to improve large swaths of Clay County’s pavement is underway.

Bad pavement wear and tear resembles the skin of an alligator and is often referred to as “alligator cracking.” With most residents at work, pavement near the front of Fleming Island’s Harbor Island Drive subdivision displayed some of the cracking on an overcast Monday.

The Harbor Island Drive was a recent example used by county Deputy Director of Engineering Taylor Abernathy addressing commissioners.

The county oversees 795 miles of paved road, Abernathy said, that it has to constantly repair and maintain. About 714 of those miles are residential roads, with arterial and collector roads comprising the other 80 miles.

Abernathy added the focus is collecting data, upgrading and operating a network of suitable pavements. The county has a sensor-equipped van to document the distress of pavement, of which there are about 20 types of deterioration.

Harbor Island Drive is an example of what the county is trying to prevent.

“That’s what we call an alligator cracked street,” Abernathy said.

Poor and unsatisfactory roads are spread throughout the county, Abernathy said. The county’s Pavement Condition Index, a metric that shows the distress on the surface, is 71.5, a figure considered above average.

“That’s the higher end of a fair condition,” Abernathy said. “That’s where we sit today. Some of that is because of a handful of new developments that have put pavement down.”

Abernathy said the county can bring a list of roads needing to be paved to commissioners. He said the county can simplify how the data is presented.

The cost and breadth of how many roads will be fixed from the newest pavement data has not been decided. The county’s pavement plan could hatch a few different budget scenarios. While commissioners can piecemeal a solution, there is a $59.4 million price tag to fix all the failed roads.

These are decisions for the future, Abernathy said. Preserving pavement is a complex process and requires a lot of cost-benefit analysis.

“We’re trying to significantly lower the cost by keeping the good roads good, and by doing those repairs when the cost of repairs is cheap vs. getting them down into the reconstruction costs,” he said.