A paving crew has finished resurfacing a 1-mile stretch of Atlanta Highway that was damaged last year after a painting accident.

The accident took place after E.R. Snell, a Snellville contractor, had finished resurfacing Atlanta Highway from Cantrell Road south to City Hall Road in Gwinnett County, a 5-mile stretch, said Teri Pope, a Georgia Department of Transportation spokeswoman.

A subcontractor then was striping the road when a valve broke and the machine used in the job “literally was spewing paint ... all over the road,” Pope said.

A crew came back a couple of days later to remove the paint that had spewed.

The clean-up effort ended up “damaging the top layer of asphalt,” Pope said. “It would have deteriorated the strength of the asphalt to leave it that way. It would have taken some of the life span off the asphalt.”

The DOT decided “we needed to completely replace the damaged asphalt.”

The replacement work began last week and was finished Tuesday evening.

“It was done at no cost to the DOT,” Pope said.

The project cost $1.2 million.