VIDEO: Oktibbeha County Lake Renovations are Moving Forward

OKTIBBEHA COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI News) – For about a year, the Oktibbeha County lake has been under much needed repairs to it’s levee and road along the east bank.

Some progress has been made with these repairs, but it is literally a long road left to completion.

The road and levee are owned by the County, and the remaining portion has some safety issues for drivers.

That affects the Wet and Wild park, leased by Rick Stansbury and a partner.

“We’ve completed the first phase of this project, which was about the first 400 feet of levee if you’re coming from south to north,” said District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard.

That phases finishing is thanks to some funding from the National Resource Conservation Service

It isn’t the whole thing, so the water level has to stay low.

“MDEQ came down and inspected this levee and found out that we’ve got some integrity issues with the levee,” continued Howard, “so they instructed us to immediately lower the water level in the county lake.”

The original plan for the repairs was to have the water 5 feet below the normal level, but because of how fast the lake fills up it almost had to be completely drained.

“This lake fills up pretty quickly when we have large rains, so we just let the outlet valve stay open so whenever we get huge rains we won’t get the water above where it needs to be,” said Howard.

Though the next phases have a few missing pieces, organizers and officials have a rough estimate on when the project will be completed.

“You know, it actually depends on when we secure the funding and get started,” said Howard. “The portion that is left to be repaired, it’ll probably take two, two and a half, years to complete that.”

It’s a long time frame, but at least citizens and lake visitors know that one day things at the lake will be normal again.

We’ll be sure to give more updates on the progress of the lake’s condition.