The Town of Sumrall plans to borrow $700,000 from the Mississippi Development Authority to take care of water system improvements that Mayor Heath Sumrall said he promised to complete when he ran for the office last year.
Sumrall said water problems have been around the town awhile.
“A little more than 10 years, we annexed some areas that we were not providing services to at the time,” he said. “The Crossland area that we annexed was being provided water services by West Lamar Water Association, which it is to this day. … We do supply water to Oloh Road; we’ve got a couple of customers there. It’s been that way for many years that they have been served by a very small water main and they have very pitiful pressure.”
Sumrall, who was fire chief before becoming mayor, said the city should make water service better for the annexed area.
“Once they annex an area, the city is required to provide better service by a certain time,” he said. “Over the years as the fire chief, I had pointed that out to previous boards that we needed fire protection in that area by increasing the water mains and putting fire hydrants in that area. Money was tight and other projects took precedence, so it didn’t happen.”
So, one of the points of his mayoral campaign was to get water mains improved for fire protection and residential usage.
“Our engineering group, Walker and Associates, has researched it,” he said. “Our water tank is kinda short and doesn’t put up the kind of pressure we need from that distance. However, we believe that if we increase the water main to a 12-inch main and run it all the way to Oloh Road, we should have enough volume to push some of that pressure up a little bit. We know from what the hydraulics studies have shown that we can provide a good fire flow once that’s done all the way out there to Oloh Dental Clinic area.”
Sumrall said the main increase will start with a 12-inch main at the base of the water tank.
“It is going to run all the way to Oloh Road,” he said. “Then it will split off to a 4-inch main going down Oloh Road a short distance, continue down U.S. Hwy. 589 a short distance to catch one of our customers and provide a fire hydrant at the end of the line. An 8-inch main will branch off Carlton Road and go to the entrance of Grandview and Crossland at that first intersection. It will be an 8-inch line with two fire hydrants going on that line.”
West Lamar Water Association will be able to feed those residences, Sumrall said.
“In the future, we’re going to have to look at what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to have to work something out with West Lamar to run some fire protection mains inside that subdivision. We won’t be able to push water that far with our capacity, but they will. They’ve got many tanks on the line and a lot more lines.”
Sumrall said the city also plans to run a 12-inch water main from the existing industrial park on Todd Road and North Rayborn Road down Hwy. 42 to the proposed soccer field location.
“We are going to get water out there to develop the sports complex for the soccer field,” he said. Sumrall has the only high school soccer-only field in the county. “We are also looking into placing some tennis courts out there at the soccer field.”
Sumrall said the water project could have been paid with city funds.
“Financially, we would have been able to fund this project, but it makes more financial sense to borrow the money from MDA at a 2 percent interest rate and pay the note rather than deplete our cash reserves,” he said. “That’s what we are going to try to do. The town has only one debt and that is a water and sewer line that we ran down Hwy. 42 West 10 years ago. I think we owe a little less than $300,000, and that is the only debt the town owes at this time.”
The Board of Aldermen plans to meet at 5 p.m. April 10 to approve the loan, allowing time for any public comments.
