OKTIBBEHA COUNTY — The Mississippi Soil and Water Conservation Commission will present a new environmental assessment plan on Tuesday, which could outline upgrades to the Oktibbeha County Lake Dam or spell its decommission.
The agency, in partnership with the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors and National Resources Conservation Service, will present information about a new supplemental watershed plan and environmental assessment of the lake at 6 p.m. in the Oktibbeha County Community Safe Room at 985 Lynn Lane.
MSWCC Executive Director Nick Ivy told The Dispatch the agency was tasked by NRCS and the board of supervisors in late 2022 to oversee the new study. It hired Tennessee-based WSP USA Environmental and Infrastructure Inc. to conduct the assessment and come up with four alternative options for the lake and dam.
Two of those options will be presented Tuesday and outline a way for the county to repair the levee and upgrade spillways to Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality standards or to decommission the dam altogether. WSP will complete the study and send it to NRCS for approval in September 2024.
“We don’t know what all of those will be yet,” Ivy said. “We’re actually cutting the project timeline in half. When you are federally funded, you have to consider the National Environmental Policy Act guidelines, and it can sometimes take us between 18 months and five years to do an assessment. This is much shorter.”
Ivy said the meeting Tuesday will be the first of three public hearings designed to gather information from county residents about the dam and consider feedback for those four options. Those who wish to submit comments after the meeting can submit via the MSWCC website.
“All of those comments will be taken into consideration when we make a final decision,” Ivy said.
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, whose district includes the lake, said the county is using $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for the new survey. NRCS, through a Watershed Rehabilitation Program grant, will pay for construction of whichever project option is chosen.
In 2020, The lake was drained to an unusable level after county officials reported the dam was in imminent danger of breaching. In 2022, Mississippi Engineering Group, which was previously hired by the county to conduct an engineering survey on a repair method, estimated work to repair the levee and upgrade spillways would cost between $15 million and $17 million.
“This public hearing will be to inform the citizens of the processes that are required by the federal government,” Howard said. “At the end of the study, they will come to us with some recommendations. At that point, the board of supervisors will have the opportunity to decide on those recommendations.”
Board Attorney Rob Roberson said the public meeting will be important to assist MSWCC make recommendations based on what county residents want to see happen with it.
“There’s a million directions this project could go in,” Roberson said. “MSWCC hasn’t made those determinations yet, so this is part of that process.”
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