State funds to be expedited for Ferriday

By Vershal Hogan (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Friday, May 29, 2009

FERRIDAY — A plan to fix Ferriday’s water problems is starting to come together, thanks to expedited funds from the governor’s office, Mayor Glen McGlothin said.

“We hope to get started within the next five to six weeks, instead of the next six months,” he said.

With the town under an indefinite boil-water notice since May 11, town officials have been scrambling to find ways to get the funding to fix the municipal water plant.

The mayor was set to meet with the governor Thursday, but a scheduling conflict kept that meeting from happening.

He was able to have a telephone conference with one of the governor’s liaisons, Doyle Robinson, however, and the news he got from that phone call has him excited, McGlothin said.

The town is already receiving approximately $470,000 in Louisiana Recovery money to fix the plant, a process that normally takes months — but not this time.

“They told us the monies we are getting, they are fast tracking it,” McGlothin said. “Since we declared an emergency, they will fast track all of it.”

The town will also put up $200,000 of the money it received from Walmart earlier this year.

The rest of the funds will have to come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a lending program that will be considered 75 percent grant and 25 percent low-interest loan, McGlothin said.

In other words, the town will only have to repay a quarter of the USDA funds.

How much the USDA funds total will depend on what the costs for the physical repairs to the plant are.

A plan to repair the plant was in place at the time the Department of Health and Hospitals placed the town under the boil-order notice, but the problem was compounded by the fact that the DHH told the town to make more repairs than were originally planned.

The plan that was in place came to an end when the board of aldermen voted to terminate their contract with Triton Company earlier this week.

Now, Ferriday-based engineering firm Bryant Hammett and Associates has taken over the project, and will present a repair package to the state bond commission in the coming weeks, McGlothin said.

The estimated costs for the water system overhaul are approximately $2.3 million.

But on top of that, the town is going to continue plans to build a 30-acre retention pond outside the plant to allow organic matter to settle out of the water before it is ever treated, something that would improve water quality and reduce the corrosion issues the beleaguered plant has suffered in recent years.

“We are trying to do this all at one time and fix it all at one time so we won’t have to come back and fix it again,” McGlothin said. “They did piecemeal work on this plant in 1999, and here we are fixing it again.”

The total cost for the project including the retention pond is approximately $3.5 million.