To get where you’re going, sometimes you have to put up with some growing pains.
That’s the message District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks and District 4 Supervisor Jeff Smith took to their constituents Tuesday night during a community meeting held at West Lowndes Elementary School.
“With economic development, sometimes day to day life changes,” Brooks told about 40 citizens gathered. “We’re going through a great period of prosperity, and certainly with that era of prosperity there are some inconveniences. That’s the price we pay for progress.”
Among those inconveniences are some torn-up roads caused by equipment coming and going to the Origis solar farm projects, Brooks said.
Origis Energy is building MS Solar Five and MS Solar Six on land west of Golden Triangle Regional Airport. The projects are located on a total of 4,000 acres. A third Origis plant is planned for Clay County, which will be on about 2,000 acres near the Yokohama Tire plant.
Back in January the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors entered into a contract that allowed Origis to maintain the roads around the construction sites at the company’s cost. If the county deems a road to be unsafe or impassable in the affected area, it can fix the road itself and then bill Origis.
Road Manager Mike Aldridge said there had been some “growing pains” at first, but the roads around the site are in much better shape now.
“They had a very hard learning experience at the beginning, but now they are making a real effort to get the roads back where they need to be,” Aldridge said. “They’re doing everything that they should to get them as passable and as smooth as they can.”
Cody Snare, site superintendent for RES, a contractor at the site, described the work underway.
“We have cut all the ditches to flow properly,” he said. “We’ve done our best to crown the road so the water sheets off. We’re going to continue to grade the roads and bring in wash stone if we need to.”
The roads are going to have to be as smooth as possible to bring in the mirrors for the solar farms, Aldridge said.
Heavy trucks coming and going from the sites have to follow a specific route — Highway 45 Alternate to Hardy Billups to Artesia Road. All the trucks can’t always go that way, though, Aldridge explained.
“The railroad track on the west side of Gilmer Wilburn Road has a (high) arch,” he said. “They bring in some things that can’t get over that railroad track. They’ll get hung. But that is minimal.”
Aldridge said he had received complaints about speeding, and had had the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department step up patrols in the area.
“We set signs up (for a 30 mile-per-hour speed limit) to give the sheriff something to write a ticket off of,” Aldridge said. “Deputies told me they hid out there and the fastest they clocked anybody was 35 (mph).”
Snare said he had no tolerance for reported speeders.
“If somebody tells me what the truck looks like, I have kicked them off the site (for speeding),” Snare said. “But I can’t be there all the time.”
Brooks asked people to report problem trucks.
“I don’t want to accuse any company of doing anything,” he said. “If you see this while you’re out in the yard in your garden, take a picture and call me to come look at it and we’ll figure it out.
“When they really start building the aluminum plant, we’re talking about probably thousands of trucks,” Brooks added. “This prairie is just going to be a busy place and real inconvenient, but when it’s all over with that cake sitting on the table is going to be really good.”
In October Steel Dynamics announced a $2.5 billion project that would add a low-carbon flat-rolled aluminum mill near its steel mill off of Airport Road, and a biocarbon facility on Artesia Road near the International Paper pulp mill.
The mill is expected to be complete by late 2025 and create about 700 jobs, and the biocarbon facility by late 2023 and create around 40 jobs.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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