April 10, 2025 • 45 mins
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Columbus's streets transformed into rivers this past weekend, with some residents requiring boat evacuations from their homes—a stark reminder of the city's ongoing drainage crisis. But as local officials reveal in this eye-opening episode, this flooding disaster might have been preventable.
Mayor Keith Gaskin pulls no punches as he details how Columbus left millions in potential watershed funding on the table. While the city secured $6 million (including matching funds) for drainage projects, they could have leveraged their entire ARPA allocation for $11.6 million. Even more staggering, had the city and county collaborated as encouraged by the Lieutenant Governor, the community could have secured a transformative $34 million for comprehensive watershed improvements.
City Engineer Kevin Stafford provides crucial technical context about Columbus's unique geographic challenges, explaining how the city functions like a bowl between two rivers. Using detailed watershed maps, he illustrates how the Luxapalila Creek's massive drainage basin—covering an area 1.5 times larger than Lowndes County—creates conditions where water literally flows backward into certain neighborhoods during heavy rains.
Zack and David analyze the political dimensions of infrastructure decisions, prompting Zack to invoke his father's wisdom: "The guilty dog always barks the most and the loudest."
The guys also laugh about an April Fools joke played on the city by the area's preeminent historian.
Subscribe, share your thoughts, or send us your flooding stories at tips@cdispatch.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From the opinion page of the Commercial Dispatch.
This is Between the Headlines.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Peter Imes, publisher of the Dispatch.
One of our hosts of Between theHeadlines is the managing
editor of our newsroom.
Typically, we try to keep newsand opinions separate, but
reporters have a unique insightinto the workings of local
government and their analysiscan be helpful for readers and
listeners.
The Dispatch remains committedto journalistic integrity and
(00:37):
our reporting will alwaysreflect that.
And now Between the Headlines.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
This week on Between the Headlines, the fountains of
the deep were broken up and thewindows of heaven were opened,
and rain was upon the friendlycity.
Once again, zach and I pointfingers.
Plus, we unveil the sacredcatacombs of Probst Park and
special guests Keith Gaskin andKevin Stafford.
(01:07):
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And now a message frompolitical candidate Bill Strauss
.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I want to thank the Commercial Dispatch for this
podcast, bringing differentviews in an open discussion.
I'm Bill Strauss, humbly askingfor your vote as next mayor of
Columbus.
You deserve transparency andaccountability for your tax
dollars.
I'm business-friendly andcharitable and accountability
for your tax dollars.
I'm business friendly andcharitable.
Vote Bill Strauss Mayor ofColumbus 2025.
(02:30):
Paid for by campaign to electBill.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Strauss, and now a message from political candidate
Jason Spears.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Hello, I am Jason Spears, your Republican
candidate for City Council, ward6.
I am grateful for the citizensof Ward 6 support in the primary
and respectfully requesteveryone's continued support in
the upcoming general election.
It is time to restore fiscalresponsibility, economic growth
and optimism back to our city.
I, like you, believe we can getback on track and know that, as
(02:57):
a community, we're going tomake it happen.
I approve this message and, onJune 3rd, vote Jason Spears for
Ward 6.
Paid for by the campaign toelect Jason Spears, ward 6.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You are listening to Between the Headlines with your
local kayak salesman andmanaging editor for the
Commercial Dispatch, mr ZachClare, and my name is David
Chisholm.
The top headline today GeorgeClooney loses a can of Dapper
Dan somewhere between the Luxand the Tom and our sins are
(03:28):
washed away, or so we hope.
Here we are again, y'allFlooding.
What do we know, zach?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
We know there was a bunch of it, and we know that
there's a lot of money that hasbeen put aside for watershed
that hasn't been spent yet and alot of money that was left on
the table that will never bespent on it.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Well, this was a bad storm.
My grandpa would have called itlike a cow peeing on a flat
rock.
And I just have to tell you howthis happened for me.
I didn't even know that it hadrained.
I got up Sunday morning and Ilooked Something was funky.
Looking back toward the creek,I got my binoculars and it was
just totally overflowing its bedand I'm like good grief, I left
(04:14):
the push more back on the otherside of that creek and I'm like
, oh.
So I went down there and Ilooked.
The push more is still there.
Now whether or not it willcrank is to be determined, and
my wife, maybe you'll be allright.
My wife is going to hear thispodcast and she's going to be
like um david, excuse me whatyeah, not to go immediately into
(04:36):
the politics of this I had whenI was growing up.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I had a it was my sister, who's six years older
than me and me and one time myfather brings out something I
can't remember what it is mysister's long about 12.
I'm about sick and he gets homeand he sees that something of
his is broken and he brings itout.
He just shows it to me anddoesn't say anything.
(05:00):
My sister also doesn't sayanything.
I immediately start talking.
I know this comes as a shock.
I don't even know what that is.
I wasn't even back there.
You know different things likethat that I just start saying,
and so my dad just grabs thepaddle, points to the chair
where we go for that ceremonyand gives me, gives me the
(05:25):
whooping.
And then at the end of it I said, dad, how did you know I did it
?
And he said to me this, son,the thing you've got to remember
is the guilty dog always barksthe most and the loudest.
And so from that day forward,even today, in my family my wife
and our kids we talk aboutguilty dogging.
(05:45):
We use that term guilty doggingfor that sort of thing.
When I look at the Facebookpost post flooding from Ethel
Stewart, stephen Jones andPierre Beard, I'm reminded of
the time I got whooped forbreaking that thing in my dad's
room Guilty dogging.
And the biggest guilty dog ofall is Pierre posting let's help
(06:09):
our neighbors in need and trynot to turn this political.
That's what he posts onFacebook, what already is
political, and Pierre and Etheland Stephen and Rusty Green all
helped make it that way.
What did the city of Columbusdo Okay, well, that's a good
question, david when this ARPAmoney came in, what they did was
(06:31):
they ended up using only halfof their money on watershed and
getting it matched.
So they end up getting $6million for a watershed project
instead of what they could havegotten closer to $12 million
like $11.6 million for awatershed project instead of
what they could have gottencloser to 12, like 11.6 or so
for a watershed project.
They gave $800,000.
(06:54):
At the behest of Pierre Beard,they gave $800,000 of it to
employee stipends.
But that's not political.
I'm sure that had no politicalmotivation whatsoever.
Can't get employee stipendsmatched.
They's not political.
I'm sure that had no politicalmotivation whatsoever.
Can't get employee stipendsmatched.
They bought equipment.
Yes, they needed the equipment,but they bought equipment for
(07:14):
public works and the policedepartment and different other
things.
They gave some of it to CLW,which did get matched for
projects they were doing, but atthe end of the day, they could
have had an $11.6 millionproject to improve watershed and
drainage in the city andinstead they decided to reduce
the scope of that to $6 millionand piddle away much of the rest
(07:37):
of the money on one-time thingsthat they couldn't get matched
that had political purposes,like employee stipends and two
issues here.
Pierre wanted to do 1.3 millionin employee stipends, by the
way.
They ended up doing 800 000.
The other thing is, even afterthey established that three
(07:58):
million dollar watershed project, that, um, they got matched for
six million dollars they wentahead and allocated that money.
Got matched for $6 million.
They went ahead and allocatedthat money.
Got approved for the matchAugust 30th 2023, at a meeting.
Ethel Stewart, the incumbent inWard 1, who posted a big thing,
was among the ones that posteda big thing on Facebook.
(08:19):
You know Bible verses andreferences.
Oh yeah, the good book, you knowthank goodness I didn't get any
flooding in my ward, but wereally are praying for the
people who did get flooded andknow that we're doing something
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Be ye clothed and be ye fed.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, so this is what she had to say on August 30th
2023, in an attempt to siphonmoney away from the established
drainage project from arpa.
She said we've had this problemfor a hundred years.
That's what she said aboutdrainage we've had this problem
(08:55):
for a hundred years well, no, Idon't think she is.
But uh, I'm sure the city hashad the problem for a hundred
years.
That's how old their pipes are.
In a lot of places We've hadthis drainage problem for 100
years.
What good does watershed do ifyou don't have anything to run
the city?
That was her quote and RustyGreen tags on later.
(09:19):
The ARPA money quote could beused a whole lot more wisely in
quote than on watershed.
Now the interesting thing aboutrusty is he hasn't been making
any post a facebook post aboutthis, so maybe he hasn't changed
his mind well, but I, I elsethey've been playing the violin.
They've been playing the violin.
Now, rusty hasn't been playingthe violin, but he also doesn't
(09:40):
have an opponent and one wondersif, um, he did have an opponent
, if he would.
And one wonders, if he did havean opponent, if he would have a
video of him out on a john boatrescuing drowning dogs from the
Masonic subdivision from Sunday.
I don't know, that's somethingyou can.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
AI generate, but don't tell them.
I am contractually obligatednot to laugh at that joke.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
But I mean it does not make any sense to me that
they didn't leverage the money.
Now Keith is going to say itdidn't make any sense to him
that the county and the citydidn't come together and there's
an argument for that.
But I mean, you can onlycontrol what you can control.
You can only do.
The city can't tell the countywhat to do, but it can sure do
(10:26):
the smart thing for its own self.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
We've just got to get politicians in there that are
not nearsighted.
You look at this, it's not ashort term deal.
This water is coming, maybe notthis month, maybe not this year
, maybe not this decade, butyou've got to build the ditches,
you've got to make them wide,you've got to make the water go
where it needs to go, but waterdoesn't vote.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
David.
The $800,000 that went to thecity employees, those city
employees vote and they'llremember who gave them that
money Water might vote on Junethe 3rd.
Water might vote.
I think it might.
I think that was a veryill-timed storm for the general
election and that's why they'reon Facebook guilty dogging about
(11:12):
it.
On this particular issue, thevoice from the wilderness from
the very beginning that hascontinued to say the same thing
from the very beginning has beenKeith Gaskin.
He was right about this and hehas said over and over again he
thought this was a missedopportunity.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
All right, you're listening to Between the
Headlines with Zach and David.
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Speaker 1 (12:37):
David, there are a lot of mysteries at Probst Park.
I hear you know about a goodmany of them.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I'm a primary source.
I'm proud to be 41 years old,which is not enough to know.
We're the same age, david, youknow that.
Yeah, well, you weren't around,though.
You were up there makingmoonshine or whatever they do in
that part of the country.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Just calling the hogs is really all it was.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Eating tomatoes and calling the hogs is really all
eating tomatoes and calling thehogs.
I like some tomatoes.
Well, there's a lot of thingsthat I remember at probst park
and, um, I remember the americanlegion had a squirrel cage,
this big deal in it.
I remember it had squirrels init, but apparently that wasn't
the only feature out there.
They had, like this makeshiftzoo.
They actually have one of thosein Steens, by the way.
(13:24):
You drive past the Steens postoffice and there's an abandoned
house over here and it's gotgoats coming out the windows.
It's wild.
You can feed them and stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Well, for context, here they were delivering some
stuff to Probst Park.
One of the things they weredelivering fell through the
ground into this concrete bunker, mm-hmm Right, and the city
spent some time trying to figureout what this concrete bunker
was.
They go to Rufus, mm-hmm Rufus.
Rufus played two truths and alie with them because it was
(13:59):
April Fool's Day and he got thecity COO and the mayor to
believe because it was aprilfool's day and they got the.
He got the city coo and themayor to believe that it was an
old bank vault, that's rightyeah, the democrats had already
been there because the money wasgone, oh my
god I'll leave that one b, butuh, it ended up being uh.
(14:19):
Something that was uhassociated with a trolley
service there around the turn ofthe 20th century is what now
the conventional wisdom is.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yeah, it's fascinating.
I have no idea what thatparticular building or bunker or
whatever it was might have been, but I remember when I was a
child, my grandfather took me tothe vfw and out there they had
artesian wells.
On the way there there was theold sanders pool on the left and
(14:49):
then there was this wood floorskate rink on the white on the
right side.
But behind the vfw there wasthis weird underground kind of
deal and these old men woulddrive their pickups up on the
ramp and they would be changingthe oil in their pickup while
drinking beer, just having thebest of times out there, as I
(15:11):
recall.
And so when I heard about thisstory I thought it might have
been the same little uh deal,but um, no, uh, probst Park
definitely has a lively history.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I was fascinated with just reading that story with
the stuff that was out there atone time and you kind of get
this is a word I don't allow ourreporters to write in the paper
but I was just sort oftransported back to this place
and trying to envision what itwould have been like to go out
(15:50):
there and see all of that atProbst Park in its heyday, when
all of that was going on.
What do you think about Rufuspranking the city?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I think that's absolute gold, because you
wouldn't have expected it likehe's normally so serious, but
man, he just put it on he put it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
They called him on.
They called me on the wrong day.
They called him on april fool'sday to ask him the question.
He told him the truth, but healso told him about the bank
vault thing and and that that isso indicative, uh, of of just
how endearing and charming it isto be in a small town where
stuff like that happens.
And it's good natured, nothingmalicious about it, was just fun
(16:29):
and it just a fun story allaround and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
You've got that park out there and I did notice on
the way here that that it hadbeen covered with water, like
there were leaves all the way upon the fence and um.
Of course now it's receded andhopefully it didn't tear up the
astro turf and whatever theybrought out there.
But uh, my goodness, thehistory that is Probst Park.
(16:56):
Tell us your comments.
I know you've got some memoriesof Probst Park.
We'd like to hear tips atcdispatchcom.
In the studio today we arepleased to have Columbus Mayor
and Councilman Candidate forWard 1, mr Keith Gaskin, and
across the table from him MrKevin Stafford, who is the North
(17:16):
Mississippi Regional Managerand Vice President of Neal
Schaefer and Associates.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Okay.
So, Kevin, also you're thecontracted city engineer with
Columbus.
You know, in light of all ofthis flooding, in light of all
of the discussions that havegone on for some years about
watershed drainage in the city,I want to start by asking you,
as a citizen and a professionalengineer, your opinion on what
(17:47):
level of priority or what rankof priority for you is watershed
.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
Sure, you know, drainage impacts everything in
the city.
So, as y'all know, we have twomajor rivers that run through
the city and with that you knowthe roads that are crossing over
them, the houses that are builtaround them.
All those things are impactedby our drainage.
So floodplain, floodways areobviously one thing that we have
going on.
The other thing is, before Igot here let's just say it was
around 2005, born and raisedhere, but 2005,.
(18:15):
I came back professionally andon the shelf since the 70s, in
71, there was a drainage studydone.
Allen and Hochul did it onbehalf of the city council at
that time Obviously an oldercity boundary, but at that time
it identified $15 million worthof drainage-only infrastructure
improvement.
So from the city engineeringstandpoint, you've got roads and
you've got drainage.
(18:35):
Well, if you don't have gooddrainage, your roads are not
going to be worth anythingeither.
So water and sewer as inpotable water and sanitary sewer
is important, but that'shandled by light and water.
So from a city standpoint, thecity doesn't have to worry about
that.
Light and water is looking atthat all day, every day.
So from a city engineer'sperspective, we're not looking
at that Now.
Sidewalks and bike lanes andall the other things are
important too, but without gooddrainage you can't build upon
(18:57):
those other things.
So you know, like our taglineis solutions you can build upon.
So until you fix the drainagethat's underneath, can you do
all the other things to buildupon that.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
But does not backed-up drainage cause
unsavory things to float up?
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Oh 100%.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Snails to come up, so they're kind of there together
in a sense, aren't they?
Speaker 7 (19:16):
Yeah, what you're hitting on are potential cross
connections between old drainageand old sanitary sewer.
So way back when they used claypipe, unfortunately for both,
and you can only imagine backthen when regulations and
oversight wasn't near what it istoday.
You may get cross connectionsand so a lot of times y'all may
see Columbus Light and Waterwill go out and smoke test their
(19:36):
sanitary sewer lines and youmay see smoke coming out of the
storm drain lines and then theyknow they have a cross
connection and so they've beenactively for years now trying to
disconnect those two.
So that's a human health safetywelfare issue that really
doesn't have anything to do withthe quantity, which is what
recently we've been worriedabout.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That has to do with the quality okay, the city got
5.8 million dollars inthereabouts.
Doubling that for a watershedproject $11.6 million.
In your opinion, would thathave been one a worthy expense
(20:12):
instead of the scale thatthey're doing it?
Would it have been a worthyexpense to go all in on $11.6
million and would it have madeany appreciable difference to,
say, an event like over theweekend?
Speaker 7 (20:25):
All right.
So you hit on two differentthings.
Absolutely Would have beengreat.
Anytime you can double yourmoney, no matter what you're
putting it towards, is great.
You know, drainage is one ofthe biggest unfunded mandates
that everybody understands.
That's out there.
You can find grants forroadways and sidewalks and water
(20:45):
potable water that is and sewerall day long.
There's not that many goodgrants that are out there and if
they are, they're highlycompetitive for storm drainage.
So this was all of a suddenfree money that you could double
with the state.
At the end of the day, yes, itwould have been great.
Now are there other priorities?
That's why you have a councilthat decides which one's the
most and highest and best usedFrom an engineering perspective.
Being selfish, sure, absolutelyAnytime you can double your
(21:07):
money and put it all oninfrastructure, that's great.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, well, to the second part of that question.
$11.6 million project, say,completed before last weekend.
What difference does it makelast weekend?
Speaker 7 (21:22):
Anywhere outside of the floodplain that you would
have had, it would have made adifference potentially,
depending on where you are andwhat condition the area is in.
So you know the mayor and Iwere talking about this morning
there was a very smallimprovement made on 15th Street
and 10th Avenue by Union I don'thave the numbers but it was
(21:43):
less than probably 200,000 toadd some drainage, literally the
street was a river at the endof the day.
And that little project, thatwater wasn't in the street.
The mayor's talked to her andthat's a small improvement.
I checked on it this week too.
Her name was Samantha Coger.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
It's been flooding for 50 years.
She grew up on that street Everyyear multiple times.
When it rained, that streetwould flood, and she's been
asking for help for a long time.
This was one of the ones thatreally brought home to me the
opportunity that we had withARPA money, that those kinds of
things are happening all overthe city that people have not
(22:19):
paid attention to.
And one thing that I'm going tocorrect y'all on that you've
been leaving out was not onlythe city that could double their
money, but the county could too, and that was 11.4, which would
have been 22.4 million, whichwould have been 34 million
together.
And the lieutenant governor hadbeen going all over the state
encouraging cities and countiesto become best friends, because
(22:42):
if they put their ARPA moneytogether they would match it one
to one.
So in your reporting recently,y'all keep leaving out that the
county had this opportunity andlet's remember that 40% of the
county is the city.
So instead of having 11.3% sixmillion we could have had 30.4
(23:02):
million, that we could have beenlooking at all of these issues
in the.
And you also did an articlerecently where you reported that
the county spent four hundredthousand dollars to get
consultants to tell them how tospend arpa and the city paid 50
something thousand for ours.
If we had put our moneytogether, there would have been
no reason to have uh,consultants coming in, I believe
(23:23):
, because you would already knowwhat you would do With it.
At Starkville, I believe youreported where Lynn Spruill made
the comment you would be crazynot to.
Starkville was the only city inthe Golden Triangle who put all
their money into ARPA and theydon't have near the flooding
issues that we have in this town.
Columbus is like a bowl.
We're like New Orleans.
We have two rivers, I mean, andthe debate should have been why
(23:47):
, you know, once we put ourmoney together, that should not
have been a debate, but therewas very little written about it
.
Y'all may have written oneeditorial about it you ran for
state office.
You didn't talk about it.
I mean, we didn't hear fromanybody.
I think Joe Max mentioned onetime that it would have been a
great investment for economicdevelopment, but there was no
headline that said city andcounty, you know, could have had
(24:10):
$34 million.
There was not much of anything.
Most of the people that Italked to about it and I've been
talking about it for four years, because this is when I first
came into office, my firstMississippi Municipal League
meeting I sat down and thelieutenant governor looked out
at everybody and said what Ijust told you Cities and
counties need to become bestfriends and put their money
(24:30):
together.
We came back talking about thatto everybody.
I had a state legislator ask meyesterday an event how much
money did the city and countyleave on the table?
We didn't have a lot of ourstate elected officials coming
in adding to say we really needto take advantage of this.
Everybody in this area knowsthat watershed and flooding is a
major issue, and now all you'retalking about when you're on
Facebook and other things is thecouncil didn't do this.
(24:51):
No, it's not just the council,it's the board of supervisors
too.
We got $450,000 for them forwatershed and flooding.
That is it.
We could not get them to giveus more than four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to gointo the six that we had.
So this is a major miss by theentire community.
It's not just the city council,it's not just the mayor, it's
(25:15):
everybody that lives here.
Speaker 7 (25:17):
So I'm going to answer the backside of your
question as well, in twodifferent ways.
So in 71, when the study cameout, one of the things that was
offered after the study wascompleted, by the way, the study
went through, we probablyannexed three or four times
since then.
So keep in mind 15 million,then it's probably 60 million.
Now we've annexed a few times.
The issue is probably a hundredmillion dollar plus issue.
(25:38):
So to your, would six or 30accomplish the whole thing?
No, but you got to startsomewhere.
If you do nothing at all, it'snot going to get any better,
right?
So that's the simple answer.
But you can't fix what Godcreated At the end of the day,
those people that are in thefloodway and floodplain, such as
Masonic Subdivision.
Nothing we could have donewould ever fix their situation.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Well, then why are there still houses?
Speaker 4 (26:02):
there.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
Yeah, so the houses were built pre FEMA, so so
here's, here's the answer.
So in in 2009, I brought someof this and it's 16 years ago.
It's funny how time flies.
But 2009, we did a town hallwith just that subdivision,
because they repeatedly floodedand a lot of people there
weren't aware of where theylived and in the subdivision was
built pre FEMA regulation.
(26:23):
So one of the things we toldthem was, if this subdivision is
built today was brought to thecity to be built under FEMA
regulation, it wouldn't happen.
It'd be a totally differentneighborhood because basically
75% of that neighborhood is inthe flood.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and I mean, I don't understand exactly what
you're saying there.
However, there is aneighborhood there and it's
there today.
Right, and it flooded Sunday tothe point where they had to be
boated out by the firedepartment.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
To both of you, I guess what should be done about
that, what can be done aboutthat?
I'll say it from an electedofficial's position Watershed
and flooding should be a toppriority.
Sometimes this doesn't happen.
It's eight years in betweenwhen a flood like this happens.
But it happens, and when it does, it goes into people's homes
and it affects their daily lives, but there are a lot of areas
in this city that flood everytime it rains heavy.
(27:17):
There are people that live indowntown Columbus that cannot
cut their yard for a couple ofweeks.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
That aren't in the floodplain, that aren't in the
floodplain.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
So it is a problem all over the city and we have
known this.
I mean, I came to appreciate itmore as mayor.
And where is it primarily in?
It's in underserved areas ofour community.
That's where a lot of it is.
Speaker 7 (27:37):
And so the engineering side to your answer
for Masonic, specifically, in1986, the Corps of Engineers
studied this problem.
It's Magby Creek.
Magby is a tributary to the Luxand it floods because of the
Lux.
Magby itself does not floodthat neighborhood, it's the Lux
that causes them to be in thefloodplain.
They studied 13 differentremedies to try to help that
area with Magby.
(27:58):
What they came back with thenthe best return on investment
was to clear and snag that ditch.
The Tom Bigby River ValleyWater Ventagement District, who
does the maintenance for thecore, did that project, have
done it several times and nowit's on their annual list.
They go through and make sureit's cleared and snagged to be
the best that it can be.
But the other thing that thatstudy came out with and I'm
going to go two ways with thisFirst off, it would be cheaper
(28:21):
to buy and demo the houses thanit would be to build a ditch to
bypass the neighborhood thatcould carry the water.
Because here's the deal thewater's coming upstream from the
Lux.
It's not that they're floodingfrom downstream rains, it's the
upstream effect of it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
So the water actually flows in reverse to flood that
area, correct so.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
I'll show you a couple of things.
I know, look, we're radio, soit is what it is.
This is the Lux Basin.
Speaker 6 (28:42):
Easy now though.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
And so well, look, we all know we have a face for
radio right.
So you know what I circled here.
This is all, by the way, fromthe 2009 town hall we did with
the neighborhood and what wewere trying to show them is give
them perspective on where theylive.
They live on the lower end ofthis large basin.
The basin is over about one anda half times the size of
Lowndes County, and I'm talkingabout the Lux Basin.
So the Lux Basin and what yousee here, it comes all the way
(29:06):
in from Alabama, crosses thestate line and you see where
Masonic sits in relation to that.
So as the Lux continues to swell, water backs up.
I'll give you another example.
Obviously, on the opposite sideof the Lux is Probst Park.
So after the rain, probstdidn't flood at all and I went
out there yesterday and it wasall the way up and over the road
and, of course, I think itcrested last night and I went
back out there today and it'sdown 8, 10 feet as the Lux goes
(29:28):
down.
So what you see here, this isFEMA's flood map and what you
see is it says that flood iscontrolled by the Lux Creek.
It has nothing to do with Magbywhich is to matter.
When the water comes back fromthe Lux, you're in trouble,
that's right.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Well, what I'm looking at here is the Yellow
Creek and the Luxapalila Creekwatershed, which extends all the
way through what looks to beMillport and perhaps even almost
Sullagen.
It heads that northeasterlydirection.
And then this small little area, which I presume is the Magby
Creek, that small little areawhich I presume is the Magby
(30:04):
Creek, that small red area itheads directly to the east and
it ends up being a drainagecanal, more or less, for all the
rest of this watershed here.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
If you'll see there at the top it says Magby's
overall drainage is only 43square miles.
The Lux drainage is 795 squaremiles, whereas all of Lowndes
County is only 516 square miles.
The Lux drainage is 795 squaremiles, whereas all of Lowndes
County is only 516 square miles.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
So kind of give you perspective of the big issue,
there's not a sump pump thatcould be built.
Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So what you're talking about.
I mean, could these qualifythen, keith, for the blight
elimination program?
Speaker 7 (30:38):
Some of them could Well.
So that was the second side ofmy answer.
So the second thing the city'sdone for years and George Irby
and his department was involvedis we got a repetitive loss
grant from FEMA.
But it's completely, at the endof the day, voluntary.
We can't make people sign up.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
It's kind of like the blight program, right, right
and so what we did, so we'retrying to get now too, for the
flooding areas.
Speaker 7 (30:59):
That's right.
What that is is you have toprove that you have flooded
repetitively and that you arepart of the federal government's
rate insurance program, federalinsurance rate program.
In other words, if the federalgovernment is paying out on your
insurance losses over and over,they're willing to raise their
hand and say I will pay 100% tobuy your property, to do it
again?
Yeah, so here's the deal.
We did that numerous times andno one in Masonic ever raised
(31:22):
their hand, and I think it'sbecause, while the inconvenience
of the boating in and out Idon't think it's getting in the
houses a whole lot, or that theinsurance claims either weren't
high enough for them to qualifyor they didn't care to leave
where they were Right.
So you know.
But now we do.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
One of them that we talked to the other day that
said, I ain't going back.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Right, that's right.
I saw that and, look, thatwould be one of those that we
hope that program is alwaysavailable and the last time we
did that program we had onehouse that wasn't in Masonic
that raised their hand to dothat right to sign up for.
But in the beginning we werehaving 14, nine houses at a time
.
Every year we would buy them.
The way that works is they buythe house.
The city basically owns theproperty.
So give you a perspective ofone of those near Masonic that
(32:00):
did do that.
If you remember, across fromthe Country Kitchen on Highway
50, there's that old furniturestore that was there.
The city now owns that lot andthat furniture store flooded
several times and they raisedtheir hand, participated in that
program and again they weretaking demo down and now the
city owns it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Well, I want to switch gears here and you know I
understand your point about thecounty, I do.
The city left half of its moneyon the table and they did it
over your objections yes likeand and I'll be.
Uh, I mean quite honestly andquite frankly, you were the
voice in the wilderness from thevery beginning and have been
(32:35):
consistent from the verybeginning.
Use arpa on watershed, get itall matched.
Why didn't at least the city dothat?
How come we couldn't get there?
And I've got some follow-upquestions on that.
But I want to answer that onefirst.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
You know I don't understand it.
I would ask them individuallytogether what is it about
doubling the money?
That doesn't.
Why isn't that sinking in thatwe're going to double our money
if we do it on watershed andflooding?
We know we have these problems.
Well, the city has a lot ofother areas that needed work
(33:13):
that they wanted to spend moneyon.
They wanted to do part of it asbonuses or.
You know, you couldn't do it asa bonus, but you could give it
for pay, a stipend, a stipend,right.
And I even talked to the policedepartment and the fire
department as a group and toldthem.
I said, guys, I'm not for thisand this is why, because if we
do this for y'all, we don't getto match it.
(33:34):
If we do it in watershed andflooding, we can match it and we
can have a bigger impact on thecitizens.
Yes, we need to raise y'all'ssalary.
We're going to work on that andwe have done that since I've
been there, that's right and Ithink the majority of them
understood it, but it's hardsometimes when people have money
(33:55):
in hand that they don't put itlike we gave a million dollars
to Light and Water and that wasa worthy project and it was
matched.
So I didn't.
I was, I felt better about thatone.
But yes, I mean, but I'm goingto go back to the county because
$34 million is that we couldhave had.
Could you imagine what we couldhave leveraged that?
What in Washington?
(34:15):
We have been to DC several timestrying to leverage the little
bit that we the six the six thatwe held on to and we've been
working to get more money fromthere and we've done that from
the state.
But can you imagine what youknow they would have done in
Washington when they saw usworking together to do this for
the citizens?
You know, sometimes I think thedecisions are made because a
(34:37):
lot of people who go intopolitical life, they're doing it
for a career or for what it cando for them and what their next
office can be.
When you do that, you losesight of making the best
decisions for the citizens.
It's easier to be able to handa big check off to a nonprofit
and get credit for that.
The work that this is doing isunderground, so you don't see it
(34:58):
as much.
You don't have namingopportunities, you don't have
naming opportunities and youdon't have to go back and say,
look, I got all this money fory'all, when you know for the
employees, you know you can'twith this kind of stuff.
And then sometimes there's aspace between when the flooding
happens.
But the long term is and what Iwill keep harping on, and the
council members and thesupervisors know this there are
(35:21):
people in this city that sufferalmost every time it rains heavy
their houses flood or theiryards flood.
There are lots of things we cando.
We've talked about ditchmaintenance and those types of
things.
We've talked about scheduling,one of the reasons that we and
one of the things that we'regoing to do with some of this
(35:41):
money that we got back the 190,we could potentially use to buy
more equipment to actually cleanthese ditches properly.
Also one of the things that welearned when we were going
through this process if youcleaned out a certain area
better, it may all of a suddenflood another area because of
the poor infrastructure that wehave and the way that so you
just can't go in and clean abunch of ditches you may make
the problem worse.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
One thing I can tell you is that about 10 years ago
or greater, there was a projectproposed to put a dam along the
Lee-Stokes Road and I believe itwas Supervisor Mike Smith that
spearheaded that and they werebasically going to turn the east
side of that road into a bigretention pod and it would push
(36:21):
over into Alabama.
And, as I recall, some of theAlabama homeowners said no, I
don't want a swamp in mybackyard.
Therefore they wouldn't sellthe property and that particular
project came to a halt.
And, kevin, do you think thatwould have made any difference
here?
Speaker 7 (36:39):
Yeah, 100%.
So everything you just said andI wasn't at those meetings but
at that time you know, Iunderstand that's one of the
main reasons.
The other, I think they hungtheir hat on some environmental
hurdles they would have to gothrough to do that, to create
that lake, and I think they wereat the time they being some
people in Alabama trying to sellit as a recreational lake
because it had to be so big tohelp detain that water.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Yeah, they wanted to sell fish out of it.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Yeah, well, regardless, I wasn't involved, I
don't know what they were goingto do, but it absolutely would
have helped.
And those are the big picturethings.
So, to put that, we went to DCthis past year for are trying to
continue in this basinimprovements that, believe it or
not, the majority of theimprovements are going to be in
the county, not the city, butit's going to impact the city
because we're on that downstreamside the mayor talked about.
(37:24):
And there's another big thingthat WCBI thinks reported on I
don't think I've seen y'all asmuch the lack of maintenance of
the Lux.
Once you cross the MississippiAlabama line.
If you ever pull up an aerial,look at how well-defined the Lux
is in Mississippi.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
And as soon as you hit the.
Speaker 7 (37:44):
Alabama line and I've had Alabama supervisors in
towns call me and say can youhelp us get any traction to get
the Lux cleaned out?
And WCBI did an article on it.
But if they ever clean that outit's coming our way and it's
going to come here quicker.
So just imagine it's hard, youalready have a little bit of a
detention going on in Alabama.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Let that be their problem for now, right, because
it's helping us.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
But just know that when they're talking about that
area that has all of thosecypress knees and goes on,
You've seen where it almost getsover the highway and it's
backing up into towns in Alabamaand the mayor's gone on Again.
This has been the last yearhe's talked about it's every
rain, not torrential rains likewe got this past week.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
It's every rain.
The other day I was talking toPierre Beard, ward 4 Councilman.
I was talking to him aboutleveraging the ARPA and why the
city didn't leverage all of itsARPA for watershed.
His answer, in short, was thatthe number one problem was
(38:40):
actually the ditches and thatyou had told him at one time
that 70% of the like, if theyuse the ARPA to just clean out
the ditches and keep them,maintained that 70% of the
flooding problem in the citywould be solved.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 7 (39:00):
So of course short answer is we're talking two
different things.
Short answer is those are themaintenance of ditches, and if
you ride around today, you willstill see ditches holding water
from a rain that happened onSunday, Saturday right.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Right.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
Those are the things that cleaning out ditches that
have overgrown, and I can sithere and talk an hour and I will
, if y'all want me to.
But go up highway 45, you'llsee both sides of the road
there's ditches holding water.
Today.
It's been there.
It's been that way for the 20years I've been back here and
it's because of the lack ofmaintenance of those ditches
Haven't been touched in 20 yearsand that's, that's 45, easy to
get to.
So now you take thesesubdivisions where the ditches
(39:34):
are behind all the houses thatyou can't get to.
So Gay Lane is one we'reworking on right now, that's
pretty bad.
But again, going back to theoverall drainage issues in the
city, a lot of it is maintenance.
I can name pipe after pipe andinstance after instance where
basketballs, garbage, can, tops,dead animals, foam that comes
out of packing are stuck inpipes that nobody knows about
(39:56):
until you go in there and cleanthem?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Beer bottles Beer bottles Is there something that
you can do for the maintenancenow that will alleviate what is
happening now?
Speaker 7 (40:03):
Yeah, there's some area.
Everything in the 71 study theyeven prioritize here are the
worst areas, here are the areasof least you know.
And so one of the things thatwas done prior to all the ARPA
is hey, what are the worst areasin the city for flooding?
I mean, there were nine areasidentified.
Again, all this was pre-ARPA.
Got with Public Works and saidall right, why are they flooding
?
Well, we can't maintain theseareas for the most part.
(40:26):
All right, let's figure outwhat's going on.
It's an undersized pipe 71study addresses that.
Or is it just an overgrownditch that hadn't been dug out
in 20, 30, 40 years?
Whatever it may be, it's acombination of the two.
Of those nine priority areas, Ithink eight are actually in the
current money.
That's right.
If it stretches that far, yeah.
But I think it's a combinationof what you're asking, which I
(40:49):
do think some of it's just puremaintenance Cleaning out the
ditch, maybe armoring it so itdoesn't grow back up, you know,
with trees or whatever elseprevent.
And then some of it isupgrading the pipes that are
there because they wereidentified as too small.
So it's a combination.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Okay.
Well then, what is themaintenance plan now, and why
isn't it sufficient?
Speaker 7 (41:05):
Can't answer that one .
Speaker 1 (41:06):
What is the maintenance plan now, keith, and
why isn't it sufficient?
Speaker 7 (41:08):
No, no let me explain .
You know I'm not in the middleof the day today.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
Well, you can answer this and I can answer it and if
you think about it, you couldprobably too.
Every time that we talk topublic works about maintenance
and the ditches and those typesof things, the thing that we
hear is we don't have enoughmanpower and we don't have the
proper equipment.
So that's part of it.
The other part of it, in myopinion, is that we need more
(41:33):
discipline in making sure thatwe're taking care of those areas
, and Kevin and I have talkedabout this.
We've driven around, we'velooked at them.
It's, there is and I've saidthis publicly there's a room for
improvement there, and sothat's part of it.
And also homeowners can help alittle bit in their yards and
(41:53):
stuff and run their ditchespulling things out.
I know they feel like theydon't have to because they're
paying taxes and everybodyshould do that, but being smart
and helping and there are a lotof people I see out blowing
their leaves and stuff they'recausing part of the problem when
they're blowing into theculverts and things that fill up
Before.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I forget.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
let me add this one thing too, to remind people that
maybe this will help people geta little bit more serious about
it.
The flooding also causespotholes.
This is one of the things.
You know, some of the councilmembers and I'm not going to
name names but would say, ohyeah, that area floods, but it
goes away.
It doesn't stay there long andI would say but do you know what
damage that's doing to theroads?
Kevin and I have talked aboutthis.
(42:29):
Water is the enemy of asphalt,the worst enemy.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
So it both softens the base underneath it and then
also can eat at the surface aswell, right, so it's a
combination of things.
Some of the issues we see andy'all see it too are beaver dams
.
There's beaver dams all overthe county.
They've been hiring John Powellbless his heart, usda.
He goes around and literallyhelps trap the beavers, remove
them, however he does.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Well, one of the things right now, that is, a
public criticism of thewatershed project that has been
approved is that it's notnothing's being done Slow.
You look over in Starkville andwhere they did leverage all of
their ARPA money and get itmatched for watershed, one of
their projects has beencompleted for a little more than
(43:13):
a year and the other one isshovels in the ground for six
months now.
The easements are the issue.
I mean, I know that that's oneof them anyway.
I mean this project has beendesigned right, okay.
So why are these easementstaken so long?
And why is it taking twoengineering firms like the one
(43:35):
that y'all hired to begin with,and now Kevin coming off the
bench?
Why is it taking all of that toget this done while months go
by?
Speaker 6 (43:43):
I think you know the answer to that because you've
been covering it, but there wasa lot of wasted time on firing
and rehiring an engineer firm.
There was a lot of back andforth with I'm just going to say
it some folks sitting on thecouncil building relationships
with either or firm right, andthat's unfortunate, but it is
(44:08):
the actual truth.
That's why that it has taken aslong as it has.
It's also been, but the areathat we're unfortunately and I'm
going to say this, having Kevinhere as long as he's been here
has been a godsend on a lot ofthis stuff, and he gets pulled
(44:29):
into a lot of things that areunfortunate for him.
Here's the bottom line.
If we can't speak the truthabout this, then we're never
going to fix these problems.
That is exactly why Columbus isbehind right now.
But what have we done?
We've pulled together.
Kevin did come off the bench inhelping get this work done for
us as far as the easements.
He had somebody in his officethat they could focus on that.
(44:50):
The other engineering firm didnot.
What I have told people, thoughwe have until 2026 to get this
money spent, and I can assureyou we will get that done.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Well, thank you guys for joining us today and talking
about this very important issueand we appreciate your time.
Speaker 7 (45:08):
Thank you, absolutely , thank you all.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
That will do it.
We thank our listeners forjoining us today.
Be sure to subscribe, share andrate and send us your comments.
We'd like to hear from you onthis stuff.
Tips at cdispatchcom.
Again, that is tips atcdispatchcom.
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Signing off until next weekfrom Catfish Alley Studios in
(45:32):
historic downtown Columbus.
Your host has been Zach Playerand I am David Chisholm.
So until next time, y'all keepit friendly and we will keep it
real.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Opinions expressed on this show are those of the
speakers and not necessarilythose of the Commercial Dispatch
.
From the opinion page of the Commercial Dispatch.
This is Between the Headlines.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Peter Imes, publisher of the Dispatch.
One of our hosts of Between theHeadlines is the managing
editor of our newsroom.
Typically, we try to keep newsand opinions separate, but
reporters have a unique insightinto the workings of local
government and their analysiscan be helpful for readers and
listeners.
The Dispatch remains committedto journalistic integrity and
(00:37):
our reporting will alwaysreflect that.
And now Between the Headlines.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
This week on Between the Headlines, the fountains of
the deep were broken up and thewindows of heaven were opened,
and rain was upon the friendlycity.
Once again, zach and I pointfingers.
Plus, we unveil the sacredcatacombs of Probst Park and
special guests Keith Gaskin andKevin Stafford.
(01:07):
But first here's a word fromour sponsors.
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And now a message frompolitical candidate Bill Strauss
.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
I want to thank the Commercial Dispatch for this
podcast, bringing differentviews in an open discussion.
I'm Bill Strauss, humbly askingfor your vote as next mayor of
Columbus.
You deserve transparency andaccountability for your tax
dollars.
I'm business-friendly andcharitable and accountability
for your tax dollars.
I'm business friendly andcharitable.
Vote Bill Strauss Mayor ofColumbus 2025.
(02:30):
Paid for by campaign to electBill.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Strauss, and now a message from political candidate
Jason Spears.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
Hello, I am Jason Spears, your Republican
candidate for City Council, ward6.
I am grateful for the citizensof Ward 6 support in the primary
and respectfully requesteveryone's continued support in
the upcoming general election.
It is time to restore fiscalresponsibility, economic growth
and optimism back to our city.
I, like you, believe we can getback on track and know that, as
(02:57):
a community, we're going tomake it happen.
I approve this message and, onJune 3rd, vote Jason Spears for
Ward 6.
Paid for by the campaign toelect Jason Spears, ward 6.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
You are listening to Between the Headlines with your
local kayak salesman andmanaging editor for the
Commercial Dispatch, mr ZachClare, and my name is David
Chisholm.
The top headline today GeorgeClooney loses a can of Dapper
Dan somewhere between the Luxand the Tom and our sins are
(03:28):
washed away, or so we hope.
Here we are again, y'allFlooding.
What do we know, zach?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
We know there was a bunch of it, and we know that
there's a lot of money that hasbeen put aside for watershed
that hasn't been spent yet and alot of money that was left on
the table that will never bespent on it.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Well, this was a bad storm.
My grandpa would have called itlike a cow peeing on a flat
rock.
And I just have to tell you howthis happened for me.
I didn't even know that it hadrained.
I got up Sunday morning and Ilooked Something was funky.
Looking back toward the creek,I got my binoculars and it was
just totally overflowing its bedand I'm like good grief, I left
(04:14):
the push more back on the otherside of that creek and I'm like
, oh.
So I went down there and Ilooked.
The push more is still there.
Now whether or not it willcrank is to be determined, and
my wife, maybe you'll be allright.
My wife is going to hear thispodcast and she's going to be
like um david, excuse me whatyeah, not to go immediately into
(04:36):
the politics of this I had whenI was growing up.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I had a it was my sister, who's six years older
than me and me and one time myfather brings out something I
can't remember what it is mysister's long about 12.
I'm about sick and he gets homeand he sees that something of
his is broken and he brings itout.
He just shows it to me anddoesn't say anything.
(05:00):
My sister also doesn't sayanything.
I immediately start talking.
I know this comes as a shock.
I don't even know what that is.
I wasn't even back there.
You know different things likethat that I just start saying,
and so my dad just grabs thepaddle, points to the chair
where we go for that ceremonyand gives me, gives me the
(05:25):
whooping.
And then at the end of it I said, dad, how did you know I did it
?
And he said to me this, son,the thing you've got to remember
is the guilty dog always barksthe most and the loudest.
And so from that day forward,even today, in my family my wife
and our kids we talk aboutguilty dogging.
(05:45):
We use that term guilty doggingfor that sort of thing.
When I look at the Facebookpost post flooding from Ethel
Stewart, stephen Jones andPierre Beard, I'm reminded of
the time I got whooped forbreaking that thing in my dad's
room Guilty dogging.
And the biggest guilty dog ofall is Pierre posting let's help
(06:09):
our neighbors in need and trynot to turn this political.
That's what he posts onFacebook, what already is
political, and Pierre and Etheland Stephen and Rusty Green all
helped make it that way.
What did the city of Columbusdo Okay, well, that's a good
question, david when this ARPAmoney came in, what they did was
(06:31):
they ended up using only halfof their money on watershed and
getting it matched.
So they end up getting $6million for a watershed project
instead of what they could havegotten closer to $12 million
like $11.6 million for awatershed project instead of
what they could have gottencloser to 12, like 11.6 or so
for a watershed project.
They gave $800,000.
(06:54):
At the behest of Pierre Beard,they gave $800,000 of it to
employee stipends.
But that's not political.
I'm sure that had no politicalmotivation whatsoever.
Can't get employee stipendsmatched.
They's not political.
I'm sure that had no politicalmotivation whatsoever.
Can't get employee stipendsmatched.
They bought equipment.
Yes, they needed the equipment,but they bought equipment for
(07:14):
public works and the policedepartment and different other
things.
They gave some of it to CLW,which did get matched for
projects they were doing, but atthe end of the day, they could
have had an $11.6 millionproject to improve watershed and
drainage in the city andinstead they decided to reduce
the scope of that to $6 millionand piddle away much of the rest
(07:37):
of the money on one-time thingsthat they couldn't get matched
that had political purposes,like employee stipends and two
issues here.
Pierre wanted to do 1.3 millionin employee stipends, by the
way.
They ended up doing 800 000.
The other thing is, even afterthey established that three
(07:58):
million dollar watershed project, that, um, they got matched for
six million dollars they wentahead and allocated that money.
Got matched for $6 million.
They went ahead and allocatedthat money.
Got approved for the matchAugust 30th 2023, at a meeting.
Ethel Stewart, the incumbent inWard 1, who posted a big thing,
was among the ones that posteda big thing on Facebook.
(08:19):
You know Bible verses andreferences.
Oh yeah, the good book, you knowthank goodness I didn't get any
flooding in my ward, but wereally are praying for the
people who did get flooded andknow that we're doing something
about it.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Be ye clothed and be ye fed.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah, so this is what she had to say on August 30th
2023, in an attempt to siphonmoney away from the established
drainage project from arpa.
She said we've had this problemfor a hundred years.
That's what she said aboutdrainage we've had this problem
(08:55):
for a hundred years well, no, Idon't think she is.
But uh, I'm sure the city hashad the problem for a hundred
years.
That's how old their pipes are.
In a lot of places We've hadthis drainage problem for 100
years.
What good does watershed do ifyou don't have anything to run
the city?
That was her quote and RustyGreen tags on later.
(09:19):
The ARPA money quote could beused a whole lot more wisely in
quote than on watershed.
Now the interesting thing aboutrusty is he hasn't been making
any post a facebook post aboutthis, so maybe he hasn't changed
his mind well, but I, I elsethey've been playing the violin.
They've been playing the violin.
Now, rusty hasn't been playingthe violin, but he also doesn't
(09:40):
have an opponent and one wondersif, um, he did have an opponent
, if he would.
And one wonders, if he did havean opponent, if he would have a
video of him out on a john boatrescuing drowning dogs from the
Masonic subdivision from Sunday.
I don't know, that's somethingyou can.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
AI generate, but don't tell them.
I am contractually obligatednot to laugh at that joke.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
But I mean it does not make any sense to me that
they didn't leverage the money.
Now Keith is going to say itdidn't make any sense to him
that the county and the citydidn't come together and there's
an argument for that.
But I mean, you can onlycontrol what you can control.
You can only do.
The city can't tell the countywhat to do, but it can sure do
(10:26):
the smart thing for its own self.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
We've just got to get politicians in there that are
not nearsighted.
You look at this, it's not ashort term deal.
This water is coming, maybe notthis month, maybe not this year
, maybe not this decade, butyou've got to build the ditches,
you've got to make them wide,you've got to make the water go
where it needs to go, but waterdoesn't vote.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
David.
The $800,000 that went to thecity employees, those city
employees vote and they'llremember who gave them that
money Water might vote on Junethe 3rd.
Water might vote.
I think it might.
I think that was a veryill-timed storm for the general
election and that's why they'reon Facebook guilty dogging about
(11:12):
it.
On this particular issue, thevoice from the wilderness from
the very beginning that hascontinued to say the same thing
from the very beginning has beenKeith Gaskin.
He was right about this and hehas said over and over again he
thought this was a missedopportunity.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
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Speaker 1 (12:37):
David, there are a lot of mysteries at Probst Park.
I hear you know about a goodmany of them.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I'm a primary source.
I'm proud to be 41 years old,which is not enough to know.
We're the same age, david, youknow that.
Yeah, well, you weren't around,though.
You were up there makingmoonshine or whatever they do in
that part of the country.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Just calling the hogs is really all it was.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Eating tomatoes and calling the hogs is really all
eating tomatoes and calling thehogs.
I like some tomatoes.
Well, there's a lot of thingsthat I remember at probst park
and, um, I remember the americanlegion had a squirrel cage,
this big deal in it.
I remember it had squirrels init, but apparently that wasn't
the only feature out there.
They had, like this makeshiftzoo.
They actually have one of thosein Steens, by the way.
(13:24):
You drive past the Steens postoffice and there's an abandoned
house over here and it's gotgoats coming out the windows.
It's wild.
You can feed them and stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Well, for context, here they were delivering some
stuff to Probst Park.
One of the things they weredelivering fell through the
ground into this concrete bunker, mm-hmm Right, and the city
spent some time trying to figureout what this concrete bunker
was.
They go to Rufus, mm-hmm Rufus.
Rufus played two truths and alie with them because it was
(13:59):
April Fool's Day and he got thecity COO and the mayor to
believe because it was aprilfool's day and they got the.
He got the city coo and themayor to believe that it was an
old bank vault, that's rightyeah, the democrats had already
been there because the money wasgone, oh my
god I'll leave that one b, butuh, it ended up being uh.
(14:19):
Something that was uhassociated with a trolley
service there around the turn ofthe 20th century is what now
the conventional wisdom is.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yeah, it's fascinating.
I have no idea what thatparticular building or bunker or
whatever it was might have been, but I remember when I was a
child, my grandfather took me tothe vfw and out there they had
artesian wells.
On the way there there was theold sanders pool on the left and
(14:49):
then there was this wood floorskate rink on the white on the
right side.
But behind the vfw there wasthis weird underground kind of
deal and these old men woulddrive their pickups up on the
ramp and they would be changingthe oil in their pickup while
drinking beer, just having thebest of times out there, as I
(15:11):
recall.
And so when I heard about thisstory I thought it might have
been the same little uh deal,but um, no, uh, probst Park
definitely has a lively history.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I was fascinated with just reading that story with
the stuff that was out there atone time and you kind of get
this is a word I don't allow ourreporters to write in the paper
but I was just sort oftransported back to this place
and trying to envision what itwould have been like to go out
(15:50):
there and see all of that atProbst Park in its heyday, when
all of that was going on.
What do you think about Rufuspranking the city?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
I think that's absolute gold, because you
wouldn't have expected it likehe's normally so serious, but
man, he just put it on he put it.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
They called him on.
They called me on the wrong day.
They called him on april fool'sday to ask him the question.
He told him the truth, but healso told him about the bank
vault thing and and that that isso indicative, uh, of of just
how endearing and charming it isto be in a small town where
stuff like that happens.
And it's good natured, nothingmalicious about it, was just fun
(16:29):
and it just a fun story allaround and I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
You've got that park out there and I did notice on
the way here that that it hadbeen covered with water, like
there were leaves all the way upon the fence and um.
Of course now it's receded andhopefully it didn't tear up the
astro turf and whatever theybrought out there.
But uh, my goodness, thehistory that is Probst Park.
(16:56):
Tell us your comments.
I know you've got some memoriesof Probst Park.
We'd like to hear tips atcdispatchcom.
In the studio today we arepleased to have Columbus Mayor
and Councilman Candidate forWard 1, mr Keith Gaskin, and
across the table from him MrKevin Stafford, who is the North
(17:16):
Mississippi Regional Managerand Vice President of Neal
Schaefer and Associates.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Okay.
So, Kevin, also you're thecontracted city engineer with
Columbus.
You know, in light of all ofthis flooding, in light of all
of the discussions that havegone on for some years about
watershed drainage in the city,I want to start by asking you,
as a citizen and a professionalengineer, your opinion on what
(17:47):
level of priority or what rankof priority for you is watershed
.
Speaker 7 (17:52):
Sure, you know, drainage impacts everything in
the city.
So, as y'all know, we have twomajor rivers that run through
the city and with that you knowthe roads that are crossing over
them, the houses that are builtaround them.
All those things are impactedby our drainage.
So floodplain, floodways areobviously one thing that we have
going on.
The other thing is, before Igot here let's just say it was
around 2005, born and raisedhere, but 2005,.
(18:15):
I came back professionally andon the shelf since the 70s, in
71, there was a drainage studydone.
Allen and Hochul did it onbehalf of the city council at
that time Obviously an oldercity boundary, but at that time
it identified $15 million worthof drainage-only infrastructure
improvement.
So from the city engineeringstandpoint, you've got roads and
you've got drainage.
(18:35):
Well, if you don't have gooddrainage, your roads are not
going to be worth anythingeither.
So water and sewer as inpotable water and sanitary sewer
is important, but that'shandled by light and water.
So from a city standpoint, thecity doesn't have to worry about
that.
Light and water is looking atthat all day, every day.
So from a city engineer'sperspective, we're not looking
at that Now.
Sidewalks and bike lanes andall the other things are
important too, but without gooddrainage you can't build upon
(18:57):
those other things.
So you know, like our taglineis solutions you can build upon.
So until you fix the drainagethat's underneath, can you do
all the other things to buildupon that.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
But does not backed-up drainage cause
unsavory things to float up?
Speaker 7 (19:11):
Oh 100%.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Snails to come up, so they're kind of there together
in a sense, aren't they?
Speaker 7 (19:16):
Yeah, what you're hitting on are potential cross
connections between old drainageand old sanitary sewer.
So way back when they used claypipe, unfortunately for both,
and you can only imagine backthen when regulations and
oversight wasn't near what it istoday.
You may get cross connectionsand so a lot of times y'all may
see Columbus Light and Waterwill go out and smoke test their
(19:36):
sanitary sewer lines and youmay see smoke coming out of the
storm drain lines and then theyknow they have a cross
connection and so they've beenactively for years now trying to
disconnect those two.
So that's a human health safetywelfare issue that really
doesn't have anything to do withthe quantity, which is what
recently we've been worriedabout.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That has to do with the quality okay, the city got
5.8 million dollars inthereabouts.
Doubling that for a watershedproject $11.6 million.
In your opinion, would thathave been one a worthy expense
(20:12):
instead of the scale thatthey're doing it?
Would it have been a worthyexpense to go all in on $11.6
million and would it have madeany appreciable difference to,
say, an event like over theweekend?
Speaker 7 (20:25):
All right.
So you hit on two differentthings.
Absolutely Would have beengreat.
Anytime you can double yourmoney, no matter what you're
putting it towards, is great.
You know, drainage is one ofthe biggest unfunded mandates
that everybody understands.
That's out there.
You can find grants forroadways and sidewalks and water
(20:45):
potable water that is and sewerall day long.
There's not that many goodgrants that are out there and if
they are, they're highlycompetitive for storm drainage.
So this was all of a suddenfree money that you could double
with the state.
At the end of the day, yes, itwould have been great.
Now are there other priorities?
That's why you have a councilthat decides which one's the
most and highest and best usedFrom an engineering perspective.
Being selfish, sure, absolutelyAnytime you can double your
(21:07):
money and put it all oninfrastructure, that's great.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Okay, well, to the second part of that question.
$11.6 million project, say,completed before last weekend.
What difference does it makelast weekend?
Speaker 7 (21:22):
Anywhere outside of the floodplain that you would
have had, it would have made adifference potentially,
depending on where you are andwhat condition the area is in.
So you know the mayor and Iwere talking about this morning
there was a very smallimprovement made on 15th Street
and 10th Avenue by Union I don'thave the numbers but it was
(21:43):
less than probably 200,000 toadd some drainage, literally the
street was a river at the endof the day.
And that little project, thatwater wasn't in the street.
The mayor's talked to her andthat's a small improvement.
I checked on it this week too.
Her name was Samantha Coger.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
It's been flooding for 50 years.
She grew up on that street Everyyear multiple times.
When it rained, that streetwould flood, and she's been
asking for help for a long time.
This was one of the ones thatreally brought home to me the
opportunity that we had withARPA money, that those kinds of
things are happening all overthe city that people have not
(22:19):
paid attention to.
And one thing that I'm going tocorrect y'all on that you've
been leaving out was not onlythe city that could double their
money, but the county could too, and that was 11.4, which would
have been 22.4 million, whichwould have been 34 million
together.
And the lieutenant governor hadbeen going all over the state
encouraging cities and countiesto become best friends, because
(22:42):
if they put their ARPA moneytogether they would match it one
to one.
So in your reporting recently,y'all keep leaving out that the
county had this opportunity andlet's remember that 40% of the
county is the city.
So instead of having 11.3% sixmillion we could have had 30.4
(23:02):
million, that we could have beenlooking at all of these issues
in the.
And you also did an articlerecently where you reported that
the county spent four hundredthousand dollars to get
consultants to tell them how tospend arpa and the city paid 50
something thousand for ours.
If we had put our moneytogether, there would have been
no reason to have uh,consultants coming in, I believe
(23:23):
, because you would already knowwhat you would do With it.
At Starkville, I believe youreported where Lynn Spruill made
the comment you would be crazynot to.
Starkville was the only city inthe Golden Triangle who put all
their money into ARPA and theydon't have near the flooding
issues that we have in this town.
Columbus is like a bowl.
We're like New Orleans.
We have two rivers, I mean, andthe debate should have been why
(23:47):
, you know, once we put ourmoney together, that should not
have been a debate, but therewas very little written about it
.
Y'all may have written oneeditorial about it you ran for
state office.
You didn't talk about it.
I mean, we didn't hear fromanybody.
I think Joe Max mentioned onetime that it would have been a
great investment for economicdevelopment, but there was no
headline that said city andcounty, you know, could have had
(24:10):
$34 million.
There was not much of anything.
Most of the people that Italked to about it and I've been
talking about it for four years, because this is when I first
came into office, my firstMississippi Municipal League
meeting I sat down and thelieutenant governor looked out
at everybody and said what Ijust told you Cities and
counties need to become bestfriends and put their money
(24:30):
together.
We came back talking about thatto everybody.
I had a state legislator ask meyesterday an event how much
money did the city and countyleave on the table?
We didn't have a lot of ourstate elected officials coming
in adding to say we really needto take advantage of this.
Everybody in this area knowsthat watershed and flooding is a
major issue, and now all you'retalking about when you're on
Facebook and other things is thecouncil didn't do this.
(24:51):
No, it's not just the council,it's the board of supervisors
too.
We got $450,000 for them forwatershed and flooding.
That is it.
We could not get them to giveus more than four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars to gointo the six that we had.
So this is a major miss by theentire community.
It's not just the city council,it's not just the mayor, it's
(25:15):
everybody that lives here.
Speaker 7 (25:17):
So I'm going to answer the backside of your
question as well, in twodifferent ways.
So in 71, when the study cameout, one of the things that was
offered after the study wascompleted, by the way, the study
went through, we probablyannexed three or four times
since then.
So keep in mind 15 million,then it's probably 60 million.
Now we've annexed a few times.
The issue is probably a hundredmillion dollar plus issue.
(25:38):
So to your, would six or 30accomplish the whole thing?
No, but you got to startsomewhere.
If you do nothing at all, it'snot going to get any better,
right?
So that's the simple answer.
But you can't fix what Godcreated At the end of the day,
those people that are in thefloodway and floodplain, such as
Masonic Subdivision.
Nothing we could have donewould ever fix their situation.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Well, then why are there still houses?
Speaker 4 (26:02):
there.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
Yeah, so the houses were built pre FEMA, so so
here's, here's the answer.
So in in 2009, I brought someof this and it's 16 years ago.
It's funny how time flies.
But 2009, we did a town hallwith just that subdivision,
because they repeatedly floodedand a lot of people there
weren't aware of where theylived and in the subdivision was
built pre FEMA regulation.
(26:23):
So one of the things we toldthem was, if this subdivision is
built today was brought to thecity to be built under FEMA
regulation, it wouldn't happen.
It'd be a totally differentneighborhood because basically
75% of that neighborhood is inthe flood.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, and I mean, I don't understand exactly what
you're saying there.
However, there is aneighborhood there and it's
there today.
Right, and it flooded Sunday tothe point where they had to be
boated out by the firedepartment.
Speaker 6 (26:55):
To both of you, I guess what should be done about
that, what can be done aboutthat?
I'll say it from an electedofficial's position Watershed
and flooding should be a toppriority.
Sometimes this doesn't happen.
It's eight years in betweenwhen a flood like this happens.
But it happens, and when it does, it goes into people's homes
and it affects their daily lives, but there are a lot of areas
in this city that flood everytime it rains heavy.
(27:17):
There are people that live indowntown Columbus that cannot
cut their yard for a couple ofweeks.
Speaker 7 (27:22):
That aren't in the floodplain, that aren't in the
floodplain.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
So it is a problem all over the city and we have
known this.
I mean, I came to appreciate itmore as mayor.
And where is it primarily in?
It's in underserved areas ofour community.
That's where a lot of it is.
Speaker 7 (27:37):
And so the engineering side to your answer
for Masonic, specifically, in1986, the Corps of Engineers
studied this problem.
It's Magby Creek.
Magby is a tributary to the Luxand it floods because of the
Lux.
Magby itself does not floodthat neighborhood, it's the Lux
that causes them to be in thefloodplain.
They studied 13 differentremedies to try to help that
area with Magby.
(27:58):
What they came back with thenthe best return on investment
was to clear and snag that ditch.
The Tom Bigby River ValleyWater Ventagement District, who
does the maintenance for thecore, did that project, have
done it several times and nowit's on their annual list.
They go through and make sureit's cleared and snagged to be
the best that it can be.
But the other thing that thatstudy came out with and I'm
going to go two ways with thisFirst off, it would be cheaper
(28:21):
to buy and demo the houses thanit would be to build a ditch to
bypass the neighborhood thatcould carry the water.
Because here's the deal thewater's coming upstream from the
Lux.
It's not that they're floodingfrom downstream rains, it's the
upstream effect of it.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
So the water actually flows in reverse to flood that
area, correct so.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
I'll show you a couple of things.
I know, look, we're radio, soit is what it is.
This is the Lux Basin.
Speaker 6 (28:42):
Easy now though.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
And so well, look, we all know we have a face for
radio right.
So you know what I circled here.
This is all, by the way, fromthe 2009 town hall we did with
the neighborhood and what wewere trying to show them is give
them perspective on where theylive.
They live on the lower end ofthis large basin.
The basin is over about one anda half times the size of
Lowndes County, and I'm talkingabout the Lux Basin.
So the Lux Basin and what yousee here, it comes all the way
(29:06):
in from Alabama, crosses thestate line and you see where
Masonic sits in relation to that.
So as the Lux continues to swell, water backs up.
I'll give you another example.
Obviously, on the opposite sideof the Lux is Probst Park.
So after the rain, probstdidn't flood at all and I went
out there yesterday and it wasall the way up and over the road
and, of course, I think itcrested last night and I went
back out there today and it'sdown 8, 10 feet as the Lux goes
(29:28):
down.
So what you see here, this isFEMA's flood map and what you
see is it says that flood iscontrolled by the Lux Creek.
It has nothing to do with Magbywhich is to matter.
When the water comes back fromthe Lux, you're in trouble,
that's right.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Well, what I'm looking at here is the Yellow
Creek and the Luxapalila Creekwatershed, which extends all the
way through what looks to beMillport and perhaps even almost
Sullagen.
It heads that northeasterlydirection.
And then this small little area, which I presume is the Magby
Creek, that small little areawhich I presume is the Magby
(30:04):
Creek, that small red area itheads directly to the east and
it ends up being a drainagecanal, more or less, for all the
rest of this watershed here.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
If you'll see there at the top it says Magby's
overall drainage is only 43square miles.
The Lux drainage is 795 squaremiles, whereas all of Lowndes
County is only 516 square miles.
The Lux drainage is 795 squaremiles, whereas all of Lowndes
County is only 516 square miles.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
So kind of give you perspective of the big issue,
there's not a sump pump thatcould be built.
Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So what you're talking about.
I mean, could these qualifythen, keith, for the blight
elimination program?
Speaker 7 (30:38):
Some of them could Well.
So that was the second side ofmy answer.
So the second thing the city'sdone for years and George Irby
and his department was involvedis we got a repetitive loss
grant from FEMA.
But it's completely, at the endof the day, voluntary.
We can't make people sign up.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
It's kind of like the blight program, right, right
and so what we did, so we'retrying to get now too, for the
flooding areas.
Speaker 7 (30:59):
That's right.
What that is is you have toprove that you have flooded
repetitively and that you arepart of the federal government's
rate insurance program, federalinsurance rate program.
In other words, if the federalgovernment is paying out on your
insurance losses over and over,they're willing to raise their
hand and say I will pay 100% tobuy your property, to do it
again?
Yeah, so here's the deal.
We did that numerous times andno one in Masonic ever raised
(31:22):
their hand, and I think it'sbecause, while the inconvenience
of the boating in and out Idon't think it's getting in the
houses a whole lot, or that theinsurance claims either weren't
high enough for them to qualifyor they didn't care to leave
where they were Right.
So you know.
But now we do.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
One of them that we talked to the other day that
said, I ain't going back.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Right, that's right.
I saw that and, look, thatwould be one of those that we
hope that program is alwaysavailable and the last time we
did that program we had onehouse that wasn't in Masonic
that raised their hand to dothat right to sign up for.
But in the beginning we werehaving 14, nine houses at a time
.
Every year we would buy them.
The way that works is they buythe house.
The city basically owns theproperty.
So give you a perspective ofone of those near Masonic that
(32:00):
did do that.
If you remember, across fromthe Country Kitchen on Highway
50, there's that old furniturestore that was there.
The city now owns that lot andthat furniture store flooded
several times and they raisedtheir hand, participated in that
program and again they weretaking demo down and now the
city owns it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Well, I want to switch gears here and you know I
understand your point about thecounty, I do.
The city left half of its moneyon the table and they did it
over your objections yes likeand and I'll be.
Uh, I mean quite honestly andquite frankly, you were the
voice in the wilderness from thevery beginning and have been
(32:35):
consistent from the verybeginning.
Use arpa on watershed, get itall matched.
Why didn't at least the city dothat?
How come we couldn't get there?
And I've got some follow-upquestions on that.
But I want to answer that onefirst.
Speaker 6 (32:52):
You know I don't understand it.
I would ask them individuallytogether what is it about
doubling the money?
That doesn't.
Why isn't that sinking in thatwe're going to double our money
if we do it on watershed andflooding?
We know we have these problems.
Well, the city has a lot ofother areas that needed work
(33:13):
that they wanted to spend moneyon.
They wanted to do part of it asbonuses or.
You know, you couldn't do it asa bonus, but you could give it
for pay, a stipend, a stipend,right.
And I even talked to the policedepartment and the fire
department as a group and toldthem.
I said, guys, I'm not for thisand this is why, because if we
do this for y'all, we don't getto match it.
(33:34):
If we do it in watershed andflooding, we can match it and we
can have a bigger impact on thecitizens.
Yes, we need to raise y'all'ssalary.
We're going to work on that andwe have done that since I've
been there, that's right and Ithink the majority of them
understood it, but it's hardsometimes when people have money
(33:55):
in hand that they don't put itlike we gave a million dollars
to Light and Water and that wasa worthy project and it was
matched.
So I didn't.
I was, I felt better about thatone.
But yes, I mean, but I'm goingto go back to the county because
$34 million is that we couldhave had.
Could you imagine what we couldhave leveraged that?
What in Washington?
(34:15):
We have been to DC several timestrying to leverage the little
bit that we the six the six thatwe held on to and we've been
working to get more money fromthere and we've done that from
the state.
But can you imagine what youknow they would have done in
Washington when they saw usworking together to do this for
the citizens?
You know, sometimes I think thedecisions are made because a
(34:37):
lot of people who go intopolitical life, they're doing it
for a career or for what it cando for them and what their next
office can be.
When you do that, you losesight of making the best
decisions for the citizens.
It's easier to be able to handa big check off to a nonprofit
and get credit for that.
The work that this is doing isunderground, so you don't see it
(34:58):
as much.
You don't have namingopportunities, you don't have
naming opportunities and youdon't have to go back and say,
look, I got all this money fory'all, when you know for the
employees, you know you can'twith this kind of stuff.
And then sometimes there's aspace between when the flooding
happens.
But the long term is and what Iwill keep harping on, and the
council members and thesupervisors know this there are
(35:21):
people in this city that sufferalmost every time it rains heavy
their houses flood or theiryards flood.
There are lots of things we cando.
We've talked about ditchmaintenance and those types of
things.
We've talked about scheduling,one of the reasons that we and
one of the things that we'regoing to do with some of this
(35:41):
money that we got back the 190,we could potentially use to buy
more equipment to actually cleanthese ditches properly.
Also one of the things that welearned when we were going
through this process if youcleaned out a certain area
better, it may all of a suddenflood another area because of
the poor infrastructure that wehave and the way that so you
just can't go in and clean abunch of ditches you may make
the problem worse.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
One thing I can tell you is that about 10 years ago
or greater, there was a projectproposed to put a dam along the
Lee-Stokes Road and I believe itwas Supervisor Mike Smith that
spearheaded that and they werebasically going to turn the east
side of that road into a bigretention pod and it would push
(36:21):
over into Alabama.
And, as I recall, some of theAlabama homeowners said no, I
don't want a swamp in mybackyard.
Therefore they wouldn't sellthe property and that particular
project came to a halt.
And, kevin, do you think thatwould have made any difference
here?
Speaker 7 (36:39):
Yeah, 100%.
So everything you just said andI wasn't at those meetings but
at that time you know, Iunderstand that's one of the
main reasons.
The other, I think they hungtheir hat on some environmental
hurdles they would have to gothrough to do that, to create
that lake, and I think they wereat the time they being some
people in Alabama trying to sellit as a recreational lake
because it had to be so big tohelp detain that water.
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Yeah, they wanted to sell fish out of it.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Yeah, well, regardless, I wasn't involved, I
don't know what they were goingto do, but it absolutely would
have helped.
And those are the big picturethings.
So, to put that, we went to DCthis past year for are trying to
continue in this basinimprovements that, believe it or
not, the majority of theimprovements are going to be in
the county, not the city, butit's going to impact the city
because we're on that downstreamside the mayor talked about.
(37:24):
And there's another big thingthat WCBI thinks reported on I
don't think I've seen y'all asmuch the lack of maintenance of
the Lux.
Once you cross the MississippiAlabama line.
If you ever pull up an aerial,look at how well-defined the Lux
is in Mississippi.
Speaker 6 (37:43):
And as soon as you hit the.
Speaker 7 (37:44):
Alabama line and I've had Alabama supervisors in
towns call me and say can youhelp us get any traction to get
the Lux cleaned out?
And WCBI did an article on it.
But if they ever clean that outit's coming our way and it's
going to come here quicker.
So just imagine it's hard, youalready have a little bit of a
detention going on in Alabama.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Let that be their problem for now, right, because
it's helping us.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
But just know that when they're talking about that
area that has all of thosecypress knees and goes on,
You've seen where it almost getsover the highway and it's
backing up into towns in Alabamaand the mayor's gone on Again.
This has been the last yearhe's talked about it's every
rain, not torrential rains likewe got this past week.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
It's every rain.
The other day I was talking toPierre Beard, ward 4 Councilman.
I was talking to him aboutleveraging the ARPA and why the
city didn't leverage all of itsARPA for watershed.
His answer, in short, was thatthe number one problem was
(38:40):
actually the ditches and thatyou had told him at one time
that 70% of the like, if theyuse the ARPA to just clean out
the ditches and keep them,maintained that 70% of the
flooding problem in the citywould be solved.
Is that accurate?
Speaker 7 (39:00):
So of course short answer is we're talking two
different things.
Short answer is those are themaintenance of ditches, and if
you ride around today, you willstill see ditches holding water
from a rain that happened onSunday, Saturday right.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Right.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
Those are the things that cleaning out ditches that
have overgrown, and I can sithere and talk an hour and I will
, if y'all want me to.
But go up highway 45, you'llsee both sides of the road
there's ditches holding water.
Today.
It's been there.
It's been that way for the 20years I've been back here and
it's because of the lack ofmaintenance of those ditches
Haven't been touched in 20 yearsand that's, that's 45, easy to
get to.
So now you take thesesubdivisions where the ditches
(39:34):
are behind all the houses thatyou can't get to.
So Gay Lane is one we'reworking on right now, that's
pretty bad.
But again, going back to theoverall drainage issues in the
city, a lot of it is maintenance.
I can name pipe after pipe andinstance after instance where
basketballs, garbage, can, tops,dead animals, foam that comes
out of packing are stuck inpipes that nobody knows about
(39:56):
until you go in there and cleanthem?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Beer bottles Beer bottles Is there something that
you can do for the maintenancenow that will alleviate what is
happening now?
Speaker 7 (40:03):
Yeah, there's some area.
Everything in the 71 study theyeven prioritize here are the
worst areas, here are the areasof least you know.
And so one of the things thatwas done prior to all the ARPA
is hey, what are the worst areasin the city for flooding?
I mean, there were nine areasidentified.
Again, all this was pre-ARPA.
Got with Public Works and saidall right, why are they flooding
?
Well, we can't maintain theseareas for the most part.
(40:26):
All right, let's figure outwhat's going on.
It's an undersized pipe 71study addresses that.
Or is it just an overgrownditch that hadn't been dug out
in 20, 30, 40 years?
Whatever it may be, it's acombination of the two.
Of those nine priority areas, Ithink eight are actually in the
current money.
That's right.
If it stretches that far, yeah.
But I think it's a combinationof what you're asking, which I
(40:49):
do think some of it's just puremaintenance Cleaning out the
ditch, maybe armoring it so itdoesn't grow back up, you know,
with trees or whatever elseprevent.
And then some of it isupgrading the pipes that are
there because they wereidentified as too small.
So it's a combination.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Okay.
Well then, what is themaintenance plan now, and why
isn't it sufficient?
Speaker 7 (41:05):
Can't answer that one .
Speaker 1 (41:06):
What is the maintenance plan now, keith, and
why isn't it sufficient?
Speaker 7 (41:08):
No, no let me explain .
You know I'm not in the middleof the day today.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
Well, you can answer this and I can answer it and if
you think about it, you couldprobably too.
Every time that we talk topublic works about maintenance
and the ditches and those typesof things, the thing that we
hear is we don't have enoughmanpower and we don't have the
proper equipment.
So that's part of it.
The other part of it, in myopinion, is that we need more
(41:33):
discipline in making sure thatwe're taking care of those areas
, and Kevin and I have talkedabout this.
We've driven around, we'velooked at them.
It's, there is and I've saidthis publicly there's a room for
improvement there, and sothat's part of it.
And also homeowners can help alittle bit in their yards and
(41:53):
stuff and run their ditchespulling things out.
I know they feel like theydon't have to because they're
paying taxes and everybodyshould do that, but being smart
and helping and there are a lotof people I see out blowing
their leaves and stuff they'recausing part of the problem when
they're blowing into theculverts and things that fill up
Before.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I forget.
Speaker 6 (42:08):
let me add this one thing too, to remind people that
maybe this will help people geta little bit more serious about
it.
The flooding also causespotholes.
This is one of the things.
You know, some of the councilmembers and I'm not going to
name names but would say, ohyeah, that area floods, but it
goes away.
It doesn't stay there long andI would say but do you know what
damage that's doing to theroads?
Kevin and I have talked aboutthis.
(42:29):
Water is the enemy of asphalt,the worst enemy.
Speaker 7 (42:33):
So it both softens the base underneath it and then
also can eat at the surface aswell, right, so it's a
combination of things.
Some of the issues we see andy'all see it too are beaver dams
.
There's beaver dams all overthe county.
They've been hiring John Powellbless his heart, usda.
He goes around and literallyhelps trap the beavers, remove
them, however he does.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Well, one of the things right now, that is, a
public criticism of thewatershed project that has been
approved is that it's notnothing's being done Slow.
You look over in Starkville andwhere they did leverage all of
their ARPA money and get itmatched for watershed, one of
their projects has beencompleted for a little more than
(43:13):
a year and the other one isshovels in the ground for six
months now.
The easements are the issue.
I mean, I know that that's oneof them anyway.
I mean this project has beendesigned right, okay.
So why are these easementstaken so long?
And why is it taking twoengineering firms like the one
(43:35):
that y'all hired to begin with,and now Kevin coming off the
bench?
Why is it taking all of that toget this done while months go
by?
Speaker 6 (43:43):
I think you know the answer to that because you've
been covering it, but there wasa lot of wasted time on firing
and rehiring an engineer firm.
There was a lot of back andforth with I'm just going to say
it some folks sitting on thecouncil building relationships
with either or firm right, andthat's unfortunate, but it is
(44:08):
the actual truth.
That's why that it has taken aslong as it has.
It's also been, but the areathat we're unfortunately and I'm
going to say this, having Kevinhere as long as he's been here
has been a godsend on a lot ofthis stuff, and he gets pulled
(44:29):
into a lot of things that areunfortunate for him.
Here's the bottom line.
If we can't speak the truthabout this, then we're never
going to fix these problems.
That is exactly why Columbus isbehind right now.
But what have we done?
We've pulled together.
Kevin did come off the bench inhelping get this work done for
us as far as the easements.
He had somebody in his officethat they could focus on that.
(44:50):
The other engineering firm didnot.
What I have told people, thoughwe have until 2026 to get this
money spent, and I can assureyou we will get that done.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Well, thank you guys for joining us today and talking
about this very important issueand we appreciate your time.
Speaker 7 (45:08):
Thank you, absolutely , thank you all.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
That will do it.
We thank our listeners forjoining us today.
Be sure to subscribe, share andrate and send us your comments.
We'd like to hear from you onthis stuff.
Tips at cdispatchcom.
Again, that is tips atcdispatchcom.
You can also follow me onFacebook or X at dchism00.
Signing off until next weekfrom Catfish Alley Studios in
(45:32):
historic downtown Columbus.
Your host has been Zach Playerand I am David Chisholm.
So until next time, y'all keepit friendly and we will keep it
real.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Opinions expressed on this show are those of the
speakers and not necessarilythose of the Commercial Dispatch
.
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