Indianola City Engineer Ron Cassada brought the board up to speed this past Monday night with the work being done on Gray, Slim, and Cleveland streets, all located in Ward 5.
“We finished Gray Street and Slim Street,” Cassada said. “We are working on Cleveland now.”
Cassada said the board has an approved Community Development Block Grant Program project that will improve the entire drainage system in the southern part of town.
The project will also include the cleaning out of drainages and pipes, and the drainage ditches will be regraded.
The city began discussing utility relocation in January 2021 after the city reportedly received a $1 million dollar Mississippi Department of Transportation grant for street improvements. This amount included relocating underground utilities on Cleveland, Slim, Coates, and Gray streets.
“So, we got two projects that will be following the utility relocation,” Cassada said. “One is the drainage project throughout the town and the other in the streets where we are redoing the water system.”
Cassada explained the roles that city crews and contractors will have in this project.
“The city crews will be out there cleaning the bases and cleaning a lot of the pipes,” Cassada said. “My inspectors will kind of be coordinating with the city crews as we are doing that. There is linear grading, and the contractors will do some of that, and there will be some pipe replacement.”
Cassada emphasized the need for a new drainage system.
“It’s the worst drainage in the town,” Cassada said. “It’s just horrible. The way we are having to replace that is lowering the entire drainage system which goes all the way out to B.B King, so we are starting there by putting bigger lower pipes and then running pipes up those.”
Cassada said they will be able to begin the project once the environmental work is completed.
