Kevin Kennedy, a Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) official, appeared before the Carroll County Board of Supervisors in a meeting on Monday morning to discuss breached dams in the county, along with other maintenance issues.
“We all know that we have a problem,” said Board President Jim Neill. “We just haven’t come up with an exact solution yet. We’ve had a lot of people brainstorming, [we’ve had] several meetings, but he’s just going to go over where we’re at, and what kind of opportunities we may have to fix these problems.”
Kennedy said the problems the dams are currently facing aren’t due to bad design, just that they were designed to last 50 to 60 years, and they have been up for about that amount of time.
“The main obstacle is that each watershed is in a drainage district, and those drainage district officials that were appointed by the Chancery Judge, a lot of those members are deceased,” said Kennedy.
He explained that many districts all across the state are facing similar issues. He said that those who aren’t deceased haven’t been able to maintain the levees due “the lack of funding for districts,” which was based upon the land assessment value which was last assessed in the 50s.
“That’s not a Carroll County problem, that’s the problem statewide,” he said.
One of the main issues regarding maintenance was the clearing of the trees around the dams, according to Kennedy.
He explained that because of the statewide federal declaration of the state due to the tornado of March 24, that the entire state is eligible for some types of assistance.
“Some drainage districts are taking advantage of this declaration and signing up” for assistance to help with dam breaches. He specified that the money would only be available to help with breaches, not the rehabilitation of the dams.
He said that the county could qualify for a 100 percent money match from the federal government to provide construction on the breached levees along with a 15 percent engineering fee and a 7 percent technical assistance fund for each contract. He said with planning and design, the project would last about two years. He said NRCS would take about 2 years to come up with a plan but they would be able to present it to the county after that amount of time. “What’s happened is, all the dams that were breached were constructed to meet medium hazard specifications,” he said, and said the classification was correct when it was made, but they have been reclassified to high hazard because they could potentially cause loss of life or property downstream if not taken care of. He said that this is “just an immediate fix to the problem, it does not address the long term objectives.” He said “I do have about $1.7 million in earmarks,” which was requested during the flooding disaster that took place in the county several years ago.
He and Neill addressed one of the breached levees at Gee Lake, which Kennedy estimated would take about $1.5 million to fix. The supervisors were aware of several different breaches at different places throughout the county. “We just need to do an agreement for reimbursement between the Mississippi Soil and Water Commission and the county,” said Kennedy.
There were many breaches in lakes around the county that were discussed, but the breach at Gee Lake was Kennedy’s recommendation that they address first.
Neill said some decision would be made regarding getting assistance in the first meeting of May in Carrollton next week.
