STARKVILLE — There are people who want to repair the Oktibbeha County Lake dam and others who want to see the lake decommissioned.
Scott Taylor falls on neither side, and for the moment, his voice may be the most vital to the conversation.
“I actually don’t care whether the dam goes or if it stays,” Taylor, engineer with WSP USA Environmental and Infrastructure and project manager for the lake project, told a crowd of roughly 50 gathered for a public hearing on the lake Tuesday night in the Community Safe Room on Lynn Lane. “I’m just going to follow where the data leads.”
Taylor’s team, appointed by the Mississippi Soil and Water Conservation Commission, will spend the next year studying the lake’s role in the greater Trim Cane Watershed west of Starkville. From that study, it will recommend to county supervisors a solution for the dam that was deemed unsafe in January 2020.
The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service is paying for the engineering study and will cover design and construction costs for its recommended action, if supervisors accept it, through its Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program. The county would pay out of pocket for any private property easements it needed to purchase for the project.
Tuesday’s meeting was the first of two public hearings planned for the process, which Taylor promised would be “transparent.”
“We’re going to be an open book on this as much as possible,” Taylor said.
After the study, design would take an additional year with any construction/remediation to follow. Taylor estimated the entire process could take up to five years.
Potential solutions
Built in 1965 as a recreational lake, the county drastically lowered the maximum water level in the lake in 2020, after County Engineer Clyde Pritchard determined the dam was in imminent danger of breaching.
Taylor said despite its original recreational purpose, the lake by its nature provided flood control for the watershed, making it eligible for the NRCS program.
WSP’s study would look at options ranging from rehabilitating to decommissioning the dam, as well as non-structural alternatives such as flood-proofing or relocating downstream structures that would be affected by a breach, Taylor said.
One option the study also requires exploring is leaving the situation as-is, but Taylor said he already determined some investment is needed.
If rehabbed, Taylor said it will be built to federal and state guidelines for a “high-hazard” dam, a Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality designation for dams where a breach can put lives at risk. But adhering to those standards ensures the structure can stand up to the type of rain events that might otherwise cause a breach.
Since 2020, supervisors have fielded two estimates for rehabbing the dam — $8 million from Pritchard in 2020 and another from Mississippi Engineering Group (MSEG) in 2022 estimating costs of $15 to $17 million.
While Taylor couldn’t nail down a hard estimate Tuesday, he told The Dispatch the “average dam build” costs $5 million to $6 million.
“I would say this project is bigger than average by NRCS standards,” he said.
But decommissioning also won’t come cheap, he told the audience.
“There are a lot of considerations other than (removing) the dam and calling it a day,” Taylor said, referring to road and bridge rebuilds and mitigating how decommissioning would affect residents downstream.
Ultimately, Taylor said WSP will consult with the soil and water conservation commission, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, NRCS and other agencies to apply a cost-benefit score to each option — also taking the “local preferred alternative”into account. From there, Taylor said, one solution should “stand out” as the best.
If the supervisors don’t like that solution, he said, they would have to present a “compelling reason” for a different one for NRCS to fund it.
Nick Ivy, Mississippi Soil and Water Conservation Commission executive director, assured the audience any recommendation from the study will be well-vetted before it is presented to the supervisors or public.
“There will be no shortage of approvals in this process,” he said. “That’s just the way it works.”
Public concerns
Some audience members questioned how much time and money the county had spent on previous lake studies since 2020 and how much of that information WSP would even use.
The county constructed with MSEG in late 2021 for analysis and design work for repairing the dam. County Administrator Delois Farmer provided The Dispatch records Wednesday showing the county paid the firm more than $524,000 for those services.
Taylor told Tuesday’s audience that work “didn’t happen in a vacuum” and WSP would incorporate some of it. Specifically, he mentioned geotechnical work, which MSEG subcontracted, that was “perfect.”
Another concern is litigation the county has pending with Wet N Wild Water Park over lake operations and whether the public could even use the lake if it is rebuilt.
Wet N Wild, which former Mississippi State men’s basketball coach Rick Stansbury owns, holds 25-year leases to operate the lake property — one with Starkville-Oktibbeha School District for the portion that falls under 16th Section land and a separate lease with the county for the rest. Stansbury sued the county in 2020, claiming the county essentially draining the lake violated the lease agreements.
Board of supervisors attorney Rob Roberson briefly addressed the unresolved litigation Tuesday but didn’t go into specifics.
“The goal would be when this is over to have those leases end,” he said.
‘Safety is the top priority’
Speaking with The Dispatch Wednesday, District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard said he thought the meeting went well and brought a “decent” turnout.
The meeting was also livestreamed and remains available for viewing on the county’s YouTube channel.
Howard, whose district includes the lake he resides near, has strongly advocated for fixing the dam the past three years. He believes WSP’s study will support that solution, but if it doesn’t, he said he intends to vote with the data.
“Safety is the top priority,” Howard said. “If that’s accomplished, then I’m OK with it.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 47 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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