OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — Asthma inhalers. CPAP machines. Walls coated in fine dirt. These are the facts of life for many Oktibbeha residents that live beside gravel roads, an issue that’s sprung back into the spotlight as the county finalizes its road plans for the next four years.
Several of those residents have spoken before the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors in recent weeks, urging their representatives to do something about the clouds of dust they say cause life-threatening medical conditions. While some of the worst hotspots are now slated for paving, it could be years before residents like Barbara Hill on Jordan Lane see relief.
“The dust is so bad I had to take up my carpet from the floor, and I got a five-pound bucket half full of dirt from it,” she told The Dispatch on Friday. “I am on a breathing machine. Been on it about 10 years. The dust, the allergies. It’s just too much. I cannot breathe. … A young lady spoke down on Kelly Road, her daughter was on a CPAP. The dust is so bad she washed her bathroom down and the water was just black.”
District 1 Supervisor Ben Carver and Road Manager Victor Collins estimated that about 333 miles of the county’s 650 road miles are dirt or gravel. While many of those are largely unpopulated, residents of the developed sections claimed to experience widespread health issues.
“My family members are dealing with life-threatening issues, and I do believe the road is part of that,” Clifford Lane resident Merry Kelly said Friday. “My mom and nephews are on asthma pumps. I have family members dealing with kidney failures, family with cancer. I have a brother and a niece on a CPAP because they have trouble breathing. I can’t pinpoint (the cause as dust), but it’s not normal to breathe in dirt 365 days a year with all those chemicals in the atmosphere.”
County options
What the county will do to address these complaints is unclear.
While District 1 Supervisor Ben Carver is optimistic the county can act in the near future, he told The Dispatch Thursday that consistent issues with the county’s tax base might make it challenging to do extensive paving or maintain those roads once they’re paved.
“I tell people all the time we’ve got a really high poverty rate and people say, ‘High poverty rate? We’re a university town, that’s not accurate at all!” he said. “But there are about 50,000 people living in the county, and about 23,000 of them are students. And only about a third of them are working age. The rest are young or old or on government assistance. People think we’re larger than we are.”
The county does receive a use tax on internet sales that generates around $1.8 million each year, according to County Administrator Wayne Carpenter, all of which goes toward the county’s roads and bridges. But Carpenter estimated that road paving costs $200,000 to $250,000 per mile, and that use tax is also needed for road maintenance and other capital projects like the county’s deteriorating bridges.
Supervisors are finalizing their four-year road plans for each district right now. Only a fraction of the county’s gravel roads are both heavily populated near the road and see substantial traffic, Carver said, meaning paving all of them won’t be necessary.
“Most gravel roads aren’t populated at all,” he said. “We’ve got several funding mechanisms. State aid, state road and bridges, emergency road and bridge funds, all kinds of different funds. And then each supervisor got another $2 million this term in roads and bridges bond revenues that we don’t normally get. This board is going to have more available funds than any has had in a long time.”
Costs of growth
District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer confirmed Friday that Clifford Road is slated for paving in the new four-year plan. He cautioned, however, against assuming that the county has enough funding to address every issue.
“We need to keep up with the costs of growth,” he said. “It’s always a challenge to find funding. You’re trying to juggle the county’s priorities. In my mind everything’s a priority, and everyone pays taxes. But only 10% of those taxes go toward roads. … When the rubber meets the road, the county can have millions and millions of dollars, but when you start putting asphalt down and moving trees, we haven’t been able to address them all.”
Trainer also couldn’t commit to a specific timeline for Clifford. He noted that paving a road can have a wide range of costs and schedules depending on how the county wants to pave it and the complexity of the road’s geography.
“Hopefully, (Clifford) will be complete within four years,” he said. “That would be the worst case scenario. The crews have plenty of work scheduled ahead of it throughout the county. All of them are important to someone.”
That’s not soon enough for Kelly.
“They’re still saying it’s a four-year plan, but to me that’s not good enough,” she said. “We’re dealing with this on a daily basis. My neighbor’s been going to these meetings for years. We have too much illness and sickness to be waiting around on a four year plan. People can lose their lives waiting around on a four year plan.”
Road Manager Victor Collins suggested that a stopgap measure might be possible, buying an anti-dusting material from private firms and distributing it until the worst roads can be properly paved. Again, however, road crews were split between helping these roads and performing vital maintenance elsewhere.
“We’re working right now on some solutions such as putting dust suppressants down,” he told The Dispatch on Friday. “We’re going to present that at the board’s next meeting. If everything works out, that could come as early as February or March. But we’ve got some bridges and stuff we’re making repairs on. We have to finish one process before we start another.”
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You can help your community
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 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
