OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — The county is moving forward with the design process of rehabilitating the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam.
After lengthy debate whether to improve the dam’s decades-long structural issues or to decommission the lake, the board of supervisors voted to take the next steps of improvement and develop a design for revising the dam.
Supervisors contracted with Flowood-based Pickering Engineering Firm, a company included in larger engineering firm Mississippi Engineering Group, in July 2021 to investigate the status of the dam. The board met in shifts with the group in February where MEG offered supervisors details about its $15 million proposal for dam improvements. The Dispatch has filed an open meetings complaint against the county with the Mississippi Ethics Commission since the meetings were not noticed or open to the public.
While the board did not decide how it will fund these renovations, it chose to move to the next step of a design process for renovation with Pickering and MEG.
“We’ll engage the design team, do some preliminary designs with some value engineering,” Chief Technical Officer Bill McDonald said. “We’ll do it in collaboration with MDEQ.”
MDEQ Chief of Dam Safety Division William McKercher outlined the dam’s insufficiencies, including deficient slope sizes, inadequate spillway capacities and cracks within the spillway.
While MDEQ defined these conditions, MEG’s proposed analysis contains a 100-percent probable maximum precipitation, meaning that under its planned design there would have to be 42 inches of rainfall within 24 hours for the dam to breach. Board Attorney Rob Roberson said he plans to contact McKercher to see if MEG’s initial proposal exceeds MDEQ minimum standards required for maintaining the dam and find out if the suggested improvements can be scaled down.
“There is a possibility of getting this reduced back down but still under the guidelines of MDEQ,” Roberson said.
The board thoroughly discussed the possibility of decommissioning the lake, which would empty the lake of its water. While McKercher told the board this was a viable option, the county would still have to spend money to bring the lake and dam up to MDEQ standards.
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, who resides near the lake, said while emptying the lake may look like it could cost less, decommissioning may essentially cost just as much as making the suggested improvements to the dam with all of the challenges it presents.
“I think the only way you would be able to do (the decommissioned dam) would be to go upstream and purchase some property and build some smaller lakes as a retention method that allows the water to seep through and not fill up any water in the footprint,” Howard said. “… If you go downstream, you’ve got to purchase a property from the people you’re going to flood out downstream.”
The county has already paid MEG more than $170,000 for the preliminary study on the dam, and if it had chosen to move forward with decommissioning it, the county would have to spend more money on another assessment of that process.
“I appreciate us trying to be as thorough as we can to make sure we’re making the right decision,” Howard said. “At some point, it’s time to move forward.”
Former Executive Vice President for Pickering Carl Ray Furr told the board a decommissioned dam is meant for flood control and not for recreation, which was the original purpose of the lake. He said his group has applied for a grant through the National Resources Conservation Service to potentially help fund improvements.
District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller, board president and ultimately the lone supervisor to support decommissioning the lake, said she already discussed this grant with McKercher who said because the Oktibbeha County Lake is meant for recreational purposes and not for agriculture or soil conservation, the county would not be eligible to receive these funds, to which Furr disagreed.
“Well, I’ve got news for you Madam President,” Furr said. “It’s already in Washington.”
Miller said she believes the county should let the voters decide on which option they prefer. She said several people in her district are not in favor of spending taxpayer dollars on improving the dam and would rather decommission it, so she wishes the board would put the options of improving or decommissioning the dam on a ballot and let residents vote.
“I know there are a lot of people who want to fix it, but my phone has been blowing up with people saying, ‘Please don’t do this,’” Miller said. “ … I think everybody’s voice needs to be heard in this.”
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