Starkville Utilities will soon initiate a project to bring sewer service to more than a dozen homes on Roundhouse Road that have lacked it, despite the area being annexed into the city limits 20 years ago.
Terry Kemp, director of the Starkville Utilities Department, said work will begin in the next two weeks on a $546,977 project to install sewer lines to 16 or 17 homes near Roundhouse Road on the north side of town.
“We’ll be installing sewer up on North Montgomery, (at) Rock Hill Road, and making that connection to tie Roundhouse in,” Kemp said. “Then we’ll be making a connection through that location all the way over to Highway 389. The areas at that location that are inside the city that have not been served with sewer — this addresses that area.”
The city of Starkville has awarded a bid for the project to Columbus-based Perma Corporation.
Kemp said SUD will pay for half of the project’s cost. The other half is being covered by a $546,977 Community Development Block Grant.
Roundhouse Road, which juts off of Rock Hill Road just north of Garrard Road, was brought into Starkville under the city’s last annexation in 1998.
Since then, Kemp said, the homes in the area have used on-site sewer collection, such as septic tanks.
The new project comes amid debate over the city annexing even more territory — and criticism that the city didn’t fully take care of its obligations from 20 years ago.
“This has taken a lot of effort and hard work to get to this point, but we’re pleased to be providing sewer service to an area that really needs it,” Kemp said. “There’s a small number of homes that did not have access to our gravity sewer system.”
While the homes will soon be receiving sewer service from the city of Starkville, Kemp said they have received and will continue to receive water from the Rock Hill Water Association.
Mayor Lynn Spruill said she was pleased to see the city moving to provide sewer service to another area that lacks it from the 1998 annexation. She said there were cost issues that may not have been properly considered in the annexation in order to provide service to areas like Roundhouse Road.
It has taken time for the city to add services to the annexed areas, she said, partly due to low population density that has not grown since the annexation. While she said the city is constantly looking for help in the form of grants, such as the one that will help pay for the Roundhouse Road project, factors such as population density can make it difficult to get them.
“It’s an economic feasibility issue and that’s one of the things we’re constantly looking for help on,” Spruill said. “Roundhouse is the last remaining truly dense area, and that allows us to serve them. That’s part of the feasibility consideration of getting a grant. It has got to service an adequate number of people.
“But at every opportunity, where we can, we will continue to search for grants that will allow us to serve people in these areas,” she later added.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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