Construction started in January on the new surgery center for Starkville eye doctor James Brown, but the Worsham Brothers construction crew has only had about three full 8-hour work days so far, project superintendent Heath White said.
It takes a few days after a heavy rainfall for the ground to dry enough for construction work to resume, and sometimes it starts raining again before time is up, White said. The crew originally planned to finish the center in eight months, but the completion date is now uncertain, he said.
“All these delays affect suppliers and other subcontractors I have lined up, and it just throws a real monkey wrench in the whole operation,” White said.
Starkville received 10.28 inches of rain in January and 14.72 inches in February, far exceeding what is considered a “normal” amount, which is 5.4 inches for January and 5.7 inches for February, according to the National Weather Service in Jackson. The area received 8.81 inches in January 2019 and 8.87 inches in February 2019, NWS forecaster Janae Elkins said.
With 3.86 inches of rain so far in March, Starkville has had a total of 28.86 inches of rain so far in 2020. White said he has worked in construction for almost 30 years and “can tell this is an abnormal year” for rainfall.
The rain has delayed both residential and commercial developments. The eye surgery center is Corinth-based Worsham Brothers’ only project in the Starkville at the moment, but locally-owned Joe Dallas Construction Company is working on two houses and is unable to start building several more due to consistent moisture in the ground, owner Joe Dallas said.
Construction workers can find themselves in a tough financial position if rain leaves them unable to work, White said.
“If you can’t work because it’s been raining four days in a row, your check at the end of the week will definitely show that,” he said.
Meanwhile, prospective homeowners face their own unexpected financial cost if they “locked in” the interest rates on a house and the weather delays the completion, Dallas said.
“Anytime you’re building a home and it takes longer (than planned), when you’re borrowing construction money, you’re paying a higher interest rate on construction money than you are on the mortgage rate, so it makes the house cost more on the mortgage side of it too,” he said.
Projects for MSU and SOCSD
Rob Winklepleck, vice president of West Brothers Construction, said the recent rainfall had impacts on all of its current projects in Starkville as well.
Although rainy days are budgeted into construction contracts, Winklepleck said the recent rainfall has been beyond what he had expected.
“It’s been a tough year,” Winklepleck said. “The average rainfall has been exceeded by … copious amounts over the last two years. … Going into this calendar year, I think we’ve seen almost 70 percent of the average yearly rainfall in less than three months’ time.”
The company has three ongoing projects for the school district and the Mississippi State University campus in Starkville, he said, all of which are experiencing delays.
It has just started to build a new house for the Alpha Delta Pi sorority at MSU, Winklepleck said. The progress on two other mid-construction buildings, the MSU Engineering and Science complex and the Partnership School for the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, is delayed on different levels. Planned opening for that campus, which will house grades 6-7, is this August.
The nearly-finished Partnership School, Winklepleck said, is “significantly impacted” by the recent rain, whereas other projects aren’t as affected.
“We stand a chance if it’ll stop raining for (them) to not be impacted too terribly,” he said.
County road and bridge projects
The rain has washed out several culverts in Oktibbeha County, and the road department has had to replace them on weekends, road manager Fred Hal Baggett said. Culverts can range in size from 12 to 72 inches and can cost from $1,000 to $8,000.
“We’re just trying to keep up, and we’ve worked almost every Saturday for the last four weeks or so,” Baggett said.
He told the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors at its March 2 meeting that the road department was “cutting into our culvert budget sooner” than expected, and he will ask the board to move money from elsewhere in the roads budget at the March 16 meeting.
The $2.2 million paving of Longview Road began in July 2019 after years of discussion, but “every time it rains is a day they can’t work,” and the completion date is beyond prediction, Baggett said.
Meanwhile, the county is in the process of replacing three bridges, two on Sun Creek Road north of Starkville and one on Silver Ridge Road south of Longview, said David Harrelson, a project engineer with Pritchard Engineering, run by County Engineer Clyde Pritchard. The three bridges received emergency repair funding from the state Department of Transportation last year.
The bridge on Silver Ridge Road has been built but needs to be backfilled before it can be open for traffic, and the county needs a few days without rain in order to do that, Harrelson said.
One of the two bridges on Sun Creek Road has been replaced, but the other will not be done and the road will not be open for a couple more months, he said. The road is a thoroughfare for Clay County residents who work in Oktibbeha County, he said.
“It’s a gravel road, it’s a county road, but it gets more traffic than you would expect,” Harrelson said.
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