Gentry Drive resident Cheryl Holliness was not expecting a large ditch to be dug next to her backyard, and she’s even more frustrated now that plans to cover the conduit have been abandoned.
The Sunflower County Consolidated School District had the dirt work done as part of its solution to alleviating flooding at neighboring Gentry High School’s campus.
Flooding has been an ongoing issue for years there.
“When we inquired about it, we were told they were digging this to put pipes down, and they were going to cover it,” Holliness told The Enterprise-Tocsin this week. “But nobody ever came back to do it once they dug the ditch. And at that point, we inquired again, and we found out that the budget had been cut, and this is one of the things that got cut.”
That indeed is the case, according to Sunflower County Consolidated School District Board President Edward Thomas.
The original plan was to establish the ditch, which would theoretically flow into city drainage, and then lay piping and cover it.
“What happened to that ditch was nothing more than a money situation,” Thomas told The E-T.
Holliness made note that some of the ditch had been piped and covered as originally planned.
Thomas said the district stood to save about $230,000 by not piping and covering the entire ditch behind the Gentry Drive residences.
“We talked to the engineer, and he said, ‘Well, we can’t cut all of them.’ So, we went back through (a change order), and did as much as we could. I think we spent about $87,000 to $90,000 to do what you saw out there today.”
That covered the ditch behind a few houses, leaving several with the gaping trench, which, as of Tuesday, still had standing water from last Saturday’s rain.
Jeffery Robinson, whose mother lives in one of the affected houses, said the original ditch had a depth of about four feet. The new one is about three times that.
Thomas said the depth of the ditch is necessary to account for water coming off the campus and rainfall at the same time.
“That ditch has got to be able to take the water off of campus when it rains really hard,” he said. “At the same time, it’s got to be able to take water that’s coming out of the sky. It can’t be as small as it was. It can’t be that.”
Compounding the issue is the fact that the city’s drainage, which runs north and south, appears to not be flowing. This led the contractor to stop short of allowing water to flow freely between the new ditch and the city’s, leaving a dam at the point of exit and standing water in both channels.
“From my understanding, they intentionally did that to keep that water from flowing back into that ditch from that other ditch that needs cleaning out,” Thomas said.
Dr. Stacy White, who lives along the city’s drainage ditch, said she is afraid the new ditch will cause more problems in the flood-prone area.
“What I’m afraid of is, with that water running, and it’s running into this ditch here, and it’s not draining,” White said. “I’m afraid it’s going to start flooding houses.”
When this writer visited Holliness’ property this past Tuesday, a large cottonmouth water moccasin snake was sunning in the middle of the standing water. It scurried when we approached but popped its head up a few yards downstream.
Thomas said when the district bid out the larger multi-million-dollar renovation project, costs had risen significantly, and cuts had to be made.
“As a matter of fact, we had a lot more things in there,” Thomas said. “We were going to have additional classrooms. When we bid it, we had to make a whole lot of adjustments…We did a $31 million bond, and to tell you the truth, when we got ready to spend money, we had $28 million to put into the two projects for Ruleville and Gentry.”
The district noted that there were about $3 million in administrative fees that account for that gap.
“The bid was like $33.5 million,” Thomas said. “We cut $3 million. We cut rooms. Initially, we cut all of the pipes that were in that ditch. We cut some stuff at Ruleville. We had to cut a lot of stuff that we wanted to put in the whole project. We had it down to about $30 million. We needed to get to $28 million. We came up with a way where we put in $2.4 million so that we didn’t have to cut anymore to make the project work.”
Several residents, including Holliness, appeared before the SCCSD board last Tuesday, but they were not satisfied with the answers they received.
“They want to tell us what they’re going to do about the erosion and everything else, but the problem is, we have a dangerous ditch back here behind these houses,” she said. “I know they’re saying they have to do other stuff, but the problem is, they haven’t told us they were going to put the pipes (in) and cover it.”
Thomas said there’s simply no more money for it.
“I tried to explain to them that we just can’t continue to go in district funds to continue to fund this bond (project),” he said. “It takes a lot to go in and find $2.4 million (referring to the money the district has already committed to the renovation project).”
Members of the Gentry Drive Street Committee plan to take this issue to the board of aldermen next week.
“We plan to go to the city,” Holliness said.
Thomas said he would welcome any solutions or help the city might offer to fix the water flow and possibly complete the drain project.
“Right now, we have no place to go but to go into the district’s budget,” Thomas said. “I do want the people to know that we tried. If we hadn’t, then none of that ditch would have pipe in it.”
