NATCHEZ — Adams County supervisors came back from the nation’s capital this week with more than $1 million dollars in federal funding for local projects.

Four members of the board — President Mike Lazarus, Vice President Calvin Butler, District 4 Supervisor Rickey Gray and District 3 Supervisor Angela Hutchins — attended the National Association of Counties conference in Washington, D.C., from Saturday to Wednesday.

They also took the opportunity to meet with members of the area’s congressional delegation and lobby for funding for anti-erosion Emergency Watershed Projects and a levee to protect county assets in the area of the Natchez-Adams County Port.

Apparently, that lobbying was successful.

“Before I even got home, (County Road Manager) Robbie Dollar called me and said, ‘What the heck did you do? I just got an email that all the money has been deposited, over a million dollars,’” Lazarus said. “The EWP money beat me back to Natchez.”

Butler said the money would be used to fund 12 EWPs, which address erosion that threatens property or public safety.

“In our meetings with (the Congressional delegation), everything was upbeat and positive, and that was one of the key things we went for, to make a connection with our delegates,” he said.

“We already knew Sen. Thad Cochran, and Congressman Gregg Harper knows us well, but the one relationship I didn’t think we had strongly was with Sen. Roger Wicker, and we got to sit down with him and talk. They were happy to have constituents from Mississippi come in and talk, and they said they want to help in the future.”

One of those future projects includes putting in a levee around the former Belwood Country Club, which the county owns and has been marketing as an industrial property. The problem, however, has been that the property floods when the Mississippi River rises.

The Congressional leaders told the Adams County delegation to put in a grant application with the Delta Regional Authority, Lazarus said.

“All three of them — Cochran, Wicker and Harper — said they were going to endorse this, and we are going to get that levee built,” Lazarus said.

“I told them, ‘I didn’t come all this way up here to visit, I came here to get something.’”