The Lowndes County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to allow Calvert-Spradling Engineers to conduct a wastewater study at the industrial park.
County Administrator Ralph Billingsley said the study, which was approved by the Lowndes County Industrial Development Authority and needed approval from supervisors to move forward, will look at what the county will need to do to increase wastewater capacity at the industrial park if industries continue to locate there.
The industrial park is located off of Highway 82 near the Golden Triangle Regional Airport.
Billingsley said the industrial park isn’t in any immediate danger of overwhelming its wastewater capacity, but the county will need long-range plans.
“These are long term fixes,” he said. “We’ve got to plan them out.”
Stanley Spradling, with Calvert-Spradling, said the industrial park’s wastewater facility has a capacity of about 1.2 million gallons a day. Total usage varies from day-to-day, but can range anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 gallons per day.
“One of the things that’s prompted the study out there is the additional land available for industrial growth,” he said. “The Industrial Development Authority actually had one of these potential industries come in and say they needed 500,000 gallons a day.
“If you add that to what we’ve already got, we’re up to 800,000 gallons a day,” he continued. “That puts us too close to our limit.”
Spradling said TVA typically recommends having about 1 million gallons a day in extra capacity.
Culvert fix
The board also voted to allow the repair of some Wren Drive culverts that are too small and flooding a county road. One culvert is on private land, though it floods a county road during heavy rains.
Engineer Robert Calvert said there are two 18-inch pipes on the creek, when there should be 30-inch pipes.
“You’ve got two pipes holding water back so both of them are flooding together,” he said.
Board President Harry Sanders questioned if the county has a responsibility to fix the culvert.
“Who put the culvert in to start with?” Sanders asked. “If the county did, I could understand going back and correcting the mistake. But if a private landowner put a culvert in that’s too small, and then all of a sudden it’s backing water up on our road, it’s not the county’s responsibility to go in and fix it.”
District 5 Supervisor Leroy Brooks said it’s not uncommon for the county to step in to fix problems such as the too-small culverts when county roads are threatened.
“My concern is we’re debating an issue we’ve done 90,000 times,” Brooks said. “…If there is a problem with this, we’ve done a lot of illegal stuff.”
Brooks motioned to allow the county to complete the work through arrangements with the Tennessee-Tombigbee Water Management District, contingent on obtaining a hold harmless agreement. A hold harmless agreement protects the county against liability.
The board unanimously approved the motion.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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