OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — County supervisors were hoping for a revised cost estimate from Mississippi Engineering Group on Monday for needed fixes to the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam. Instead, they got little more than another bill to pay.
The board approved, by a 4-1 margin, paying MEG another $254,500 to continue design work to repair the dam, more than two months after supervisors gave the firm the go-ahead March 7 to proceed. The county has already paid MEG $215,437.83 for work related to the dam since July, according to county administrative records.
MEG, the parent firm of Flowood-based Pickering Engineering, presented a report to supervisors in February estimating dam fixes at $15 million, nearly double what county engineer Clyde Pritchard told the county in 2020 a full replacement would cost. Supervisors have committed its $9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to the project with hopes of obtaining a state match for the work, but they asked MEG in March to look for ways to lower that cost estimate.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality Dam Safety Division has to approve the design before work can begin.
On Monday, Bill McDonald, chief technical officer with Waggoner Engineering — which is partnering with MEG on the dam project — told supervisors the group has met only once with MDEQ since the March 7 vote and had not submitted any designs. In order for that work to proceed, he said, the county would need to amend its contract with MEG, and the group would then need to schedule a work session with the Dam Safety Division to hash out design details.
Though McDonald said in February the conceptual design in MEG’s original report exceeded MDEQ standards, he told supervisors Monday the cost estimate was based on MDEQ requirements.
“That’s what’s driving the cost of improvement,” McDonald said.
He told The Dispatch after the meeting the basic needs at the dam were fixing isolated slides on the levy and making the concrete spillways “several times larger” to accommodate a maximum possible precipitation of 42 inches in 24 hours — what MDEQ requires for a high hazard dam, which the one at Oktibbeha County Lake is classified based on the number of people who can be affected downstream by a breach.
Through the work session, McDonald said he hopes MDEQ might relax some of the requirements for the “magnitude of the work,” which in turn would reduce the overall estimate to “a more reasonable cost.”
He estimated the group could meet with MDEQ some time in the next eight weeks. In roughly 18 weeks, he said, he can present to supervisors two “30-percent” designs. Once they select between the incomplete designs, MEG will have it finished, obtain final board authorization and submit it to MDEQ for a permit.
Actual work on the dam would begin, at earliest, in 2023.
“If everything worked perfectly, ideally it would start next summer,” McDonald told The Dispatch. “It would not be constructed this year.”
William McKercher, chief for MDEQ’s Dam Safety Division, submitted a letter to County Administrator Delois Farmer on Feb. 23, calling the dam unsatisfactory and outlining the needed work on the slopes, levy and spillways.
He told The Dispatch on Monday, however, MDEQ has not reviewed any of MEG’s cost estimates. Further, he said he last met with McDonald on March 29, at which point he doesn’t recall any talk of a work session.
“We are by no means dictating what the designs need to be,” McKercher said in a phone interview, noting his office only confirms dam designs meet state standards. “No one has contacted me about a work session.”
As for the dam’s problems, McKercher said, they aren’t new.
“These are all things the county has known about since 1979, and the county hasn’t taken any action to remediate those issues,” he said. “The county could have done it in pieces along, but now we’re at a point where it really all needs to be done to get the dam up to operating condition.”
Supervisor reactions
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, whose district includes the lake, thought McDonald would show up Monday with some preliminary drawings. He told The Dispatch he learned a few days ago “that wouldn’t be the case.”
Still, he said he’s happy overall with the work MEG has accomplished so far and is confident its conversations with MDEQ will whittle down repair cost estimates. Even then, he acknowledged, there’s no guarantee the estimates will hold.
“The only way we’re really going to know how much the dam is going to cost is when we get a design approved and send it out for bids,” he said.
Bricklee Miller, board president who represents District 4, said she has been disappointed with several aspects of MEG’s work.
She opposed amending MEG’s contract Monday, in part, because she thought the firm was acting more as a “middleman” and costing the taxpayers more money than it would spend dealing directly with the contractors doing the work.
For example, MEG does not design high hazard dams, McDonald confirmed, and has instead subcontracted that work to Schnabel Engineering. However, Schnabel’s proposal last year to manage the project was among those the county rejected in favor of MEG.
“We could be working directly with the engineering firm doing the work,” Miller said. “Instead we’re just adding costs to the taxpayers.”
Howard, who couched MEG more as a “project manager” with access to “experts” for each aspect of the project, said he believes this route is more efficient.
“I’m not sure there’s a firm out there that can do all the work from beginning to end,” he said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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