NATCHEZ — After years of worry, residents of Robins Lake Road will soon get peace of mind.

At the Adams County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, District Conservationist Bryan Stringer announced that National Resources Conservation Service started the process of advertising for bids to repair the Robins Lake dam.

The dam, crowned by a road, is the only real way in and out of a subdivision. In 2004, heavy rains filled the lake and overran the lake’s dam.

Since then, the earthen dam has softened, and parts near the spillway are crumbling.

The state soil and water conservation commission recently signed an agreement to help fix the dam, Stringer said.

The commission would pay for 70 percent of the work, and the county would pay for 30 percent, he said.

“We expect to let the bids the end of this month and hopefully start construction by the end of September,” Stringer said.

It is important that the work be finished by winter, a historically rainy period for the area, he said.

“The big threat to the road and the lake is the spillway,” Stringer said after the board meeting. “We’re going to basically replace the spillway. There’s a good bit of clearing, moving rubble, hauling in earth and building foundation that has to be done.”

The pipes that empty excess lake water into a ravine are still good, he said. It’s where the water goes that is the potential problem.

“We’ll install a ditch that runs from the pipes to the bottom of the hole,” he said. “When the water comes out of the chute, it helps break it up so (the water) won’t eat out the bottom.”

Replacing the spillway and parts of the dam is vital to the roughly 20 residents who depend on the road to get home, he said.

“If it keeps doing what it’s doing, it will eventually undermine the levee and collapse it,” Stringer said. “It’s OK right now, but we don’t know if it will make it through another winter.”

In other business:

4The board voted to allow Civil Defense Director George Souderes to submit a pre-application for grants for outdoor warning sirens and emergency generators for the county.

4The board approved financing for newly purchased road equipment, most of which was paid for with the money from selling the old equipment. The financing was for roughly $732,000, County Administrator Cathy Walker said.