STARKVILLE — By sometime early next year, the often stinky, muddy, water-filled hole where the septic tank drains in Darrell and Annie Johnson’s yard on Babylon Road, should be no more.
The Johnsons have been looking forward to that news for 23 years.
“This septic tank has been a hassle, I’m telling you,” said Annie Johnson, who retired after working at both Mississippi State University and Starkville School District. Her husband, also retired, is a former emergency medical technician and city firefighter.
“Sometimes it will back up in the house,” Annie added. “It’s not good at all.”
Babylon Road and its 12 homes, located off Garrard Road west of Highway 25, were annexed into Starkville city limits in 1998. On Tuesday, they learned sewer service would finally come to their neighborhood through a $308,000 Community Development Block Grant.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said the city has partnered for 15 years with the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District to secure block grants to bring sewer service to areas from the 1998 annexation that didn’t have it. Babylon Road marks the third such grant-funded project.
“We’re hoping to get the project started this year and have it completed by next year,” Spruill said.
Once complete, it will leave only a handful of citizens in the 1998 annexation area without sewer service.
“We’re so happy to get it, and we’re very appreciative to the city officials and everyone who helped get it to us,” Annie Johnson said. “But I don’t know why it took so long. We pay city taxes, so we should get the same benefits as everyone else.”
Spruill said it’s not quite that simple.
When the city annexed areas north and west of the city limits in 1998, its resolution sought to bring sewer service to areas where it was “economically feasible” within five years.
“That’s the term we continue to use,” Spruill said. “We did not guarantee it.”
Some areas, particularly Babylon Road and parts of Rockhill Road, were isolated and required “exorbitant” infrastructure costs for a small number of customers, leading the city to pursue grant avenues.
Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins, who as Ward 6 alderman represents Babylon Road residents, announced at Tuesday’s board meeting he was “as excited as a child on Christmas morning,” when he heard the project would receive grant funds.
Speaking to The Dispatch on Wednesday, he proclaimed, “I’m still excited.”
Perkins said he has long advocated for getting sewer service to the annexed residents of his ward, and it is “very crucial” for it to be finished as quickly as possible.
“This is an excellent quality of life service that promotes the health, safety and welfare of our citizens. … It’s good for the city’s representation as an entity of good faith. But this issue had to be kept before the governing body or else it would have disappeared.”
The city is currently undergoing a legal challenge in chancery court of its attempt to annex about 2.3 square miles from areas of Oktibbeha County east of the city, along the Highway 82 and Highway 182 corridors out to Clayton Village and in the University Hills area. It would bring in roughly 1,100 residents, Spruill said. The trial will conclude this month.
This time, though, aldermen approved a separate facilities and services plan beyond the annexation ordinance guaranteeing all city services, sewer included, will be extended within five years to the annexed area.
“We’ve obligated ourselves to do it,” Spruill said. “We may not have it all completed in five years, but we’ll at least have to have begun.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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