A busy intersection in Polk County is going to change this year as workers have put up the silt fences and excavators have been brought into get ready for construction work.

The first stage of changing the intersection where Piedmont Highway, Canal Street, Adamson Road and the Highway 100 cutoff meet into a roundabout began this week. Workers were out on Monday to begin digging around the intersection to complete the drainage work required.

Reworking how stormwater runoff will flow around the new traffic control feature will be the first step toward installing the roundabout at the intersection.

The project put forth by the Georgia Department of Transportation required that the Polk County Commission approve some lighting costs for the intersection in the future, which was given unanimous consent in late 2021.

Since then, it has been a watch and wait project for Polk as other construction work continued around the area. Roadwork has recently finished up on Highway 27 North, and a Highway 101 bridge project in Rockmart is still underway.

This project is starting as another is set to get started in Cedartown on North Main Street as a bridge replacement is coming that will require a detour onto College Street. (Check back for additional news about this project in a separate item coming shortly.)

Just under $3 million will be spent to install the roundabout by the Department of Transportation, meant to increase the flow of traffic and provide additional traffic safety at an intersection that has seen multiple wrecks over the past decades.