Tommy Land and Steve Sanford are both residents of Booth Lake, located west of Highway 35. When there is a heavy rainfall, they said they can be held in their homes for days with no way in and no way out. If there’s an emergency, no one can get to them, and they want to find a solution for the problem.
“When it rained last year, we were in our homes for 13 days,” Land said. “When it rained recently, it was three to four days with nowhere to go,” he said.
The men said, during a flood, the spillover from the lake flood the access road.
Supervisor Claude Fluker said a letter from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said it was the responsibility of MDEQ and the NRCS to maintain the lake, not the county.
“There’s nothing I can do,” Fluker said.
Sanford said MDEQ won’t do much to help, but he wants to know if some form of temporary relief can be provided.
“They predicted this rain,” he said. “They knew it was going be three to eight inches of rain. So, if they knew, can’t we do something ahead of time?” Sanford asked.
He suggested maybe looking into temporary pumps to pump some of the water out to make the road accessible when it floods.
“I have a concrete patio table,” Land said. “When I can’t see the top of it, I know the water is too high for me to drive in.”
Fluker told him that he would look into it and bring it back to the board.
Also, resident Ernie Watts suggested that the board make Carroll County a Second Amendment Safe Haven. If the board were to pass a resolution, it would mean no one could place limitations on owning a gun in Carroll County.
The board is currently taking the matter under consideration.
“I believe that we all own guns, and that we are all law abiding citizens. We never know which way the wind is going to shift in Washington,” Watts said.
He said it would show unity that Carroll County isn’t going to allow anyone to come in and dictate who can bear arms and how.
Watts mentioned the red flag order. According to a 2019 story in the New York Times, 17 states have enacted a “red flag law.”
Watts said the way he understood the law was that “if someone comes into my house and try to rob me and I try to defend myself, the police can knock on my door and say ‘Give me your guns.’”
But, that’s not exactly what the law would have said. Senate Bill 2055, introduced by Robert Jackson (D-Marks), and David Jordan (D-Greenwood) says the bill, which died in committee, states it was an “act to create the red flag law; to create a process by which a person's right to possess firearms can be restrained if the person is thereby a danger to himself or herself or others.”
The law dealt with a person owning a gun who may have a mental issue and would put the work on the Chancery Clerks to determine this.
Although 15 counties including Rankin and DeSoto Counties have signed this resolution, Watts and other Mississippians won’t have to worry. The bill never had a chance to survive. The Natchez Democrat reported that Jackson was told by the chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary A committee, Senator Sally Doty-R of Brookhaven, that it “would never see the light of day.”
