Oktibbeha supervisors voted 3-2 on Monday to use county operating funds for County Engineer Clyde Pritchard’s to develop blueprints to replace the Oktibbeha County Lake dam.
The board voted after a public hearing Feb. 24 to authorize Pritchard to draw up the plans with $250,000 from the county’s $2.2 million allocation from the Office of State Aid Road Construction within the Mississippi Department of Transportation. The board has since learned they are not allowed to use state aid road funds for that purpose, District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said.
Howard, District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams voted for the motion, and Board President John Montgomery of District 1 and Supervisor Bricklee Miller of District 4 voted against it.
The vote came after strong disagreement between Pritchard and George Sills, a retired dam engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who shared his professional opinion with the board on what to do with the dam, which showed early signs of breaching in January.
Representatives from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the USACE Mobile District met with county leaders March 2 to assess the condition of the dam. Both entities have known for decades that the dam has structural issues, including undersized spillways and slopes that are too steep and generate mudslides.
The supervisors decided March 3 to figure out the scope of a USACE-recommended study of the dam and consider approving it Monday, but Howard insisted that the county move forward with replacing the dam instead of spending money on more research. So far the county has spent $150,000 in the last two months on pumps that lower the water level at the dam.
“If you want to talk about being prudent with county money, I think we need to authorize our engineer to move forward with developing a set of prints,” Howard said.
Officials have estimated it would cost about $8 million to replace the dam.
Different professional opinions
Sills said building new slopes and a larger spillway is a less expensive option than replacing the dam and will bring it into MDEQ compliance.
“My biggest concern is, don’t waste the taxpayers’ money,” Sills said. “Be prudent with it.
“It doesn’t make economic sense to build a new dam,” he added. “It would be like, and you maybe don’t have a pickup truck, but going out into the street and having a wreck and (then) getting rid of the pickup truck because it’s got a bent fender. Put a new fender on the pickup truck. You can put new side slopes on this dam out there.”
A breach in the levee would flood the nearby residential area and force about 250 people in at least 130 households to evacuate, and Sills said dams are most likely to breach the first time they are filled.
Pritchard said he “disagree(d) wholeheartedly” with this statement based on his own experience as a geotechnical engineer. He took issue with Sills “interjecting himself into a project that has an engineer of record” after he has “been babysitting this dam (himself) for eight to 12 years.”
Howard said he was satisfied with Pritchard’s expertise and repeated statements that the best way to make the dam safe is to completely rebuild it.
“What’s being proposed (by Sills) is to put good material on top of bad material and hope it doesn’t slide,” Howard said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Sills said Howard and Pritchard’s assessments were inaccurate and the board’s vote was unwise. Pritchard declined to be interviewed after the meeting.
Montgomery told The Dispatch he had hoped the board would consider other options besides replacing the dam but ultimately wanted the county to take any steps forward at all.
The county qualified for aid funding from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and will get back 87.5 percent of the money it has spent on emergency work at the dam, including the use of the pumps, county EMA director Kristen Campanella told the board.
Coronavirus preparedness
Oktibbeha County still has no confirmed cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus despite some rumors, Campanella said. As of Monday, Mississippi has 12 confirmed cases, including one in Monroe County.
All emergency response agencies in Oktibbeha County have a virtual situation room in order to stay in contact with each other. Campanella said she requested masks, gowns, gloves and shoe covers from MEMA for medical professionals to use. She also requested no-contact temperature readers to be used on anyone who makes an appearance in court, and anyone who is sick will not be allowed to enter.
OCH Regional Medical Center has conducted some testing for the virus, and EMA will set up three designated locations for drive-through testing throughout the county, Campanella said. EMA has posted hand-washing instruction signs in the bathrooms of all the local government buildings, she said.
“We have to control it at a community level, so if we do what we’re supposed to do, maybe we can stop the spread here,” she said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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