Two very long winding roads of federal projects in Greenville and greater Washington County have finally found their end this year.
On Friday, a private ground-breaking ceremony will mark the beginning of construction on a long-awaited new federal courthouse in Greenville, and earlier this year, work began on the U.S. Hwy 82 bypass from Leland to the Mississippi River Bridge.
The construction of the new federal courthouse was an often-contentious affair regarding its location.
When the project was announced, a few small groups in town took it upon themselves to deem the former Elks Lodge property as the perfect location for the courthouse.
Even though that location was an impossibility to consider since it fell on a historically significant property, and no matter that the city had years before designated the Stein Mart Square site as surplus for use as a site for the courthouse.
I’m happy to say the uproar seems to have died down, and I do hope those who promised to lie down in front of bulldozers at Stein Mart square will sit this one out.
The construction of the courthouse does not bring with it the negative results often seen when bypasses are constructed.
In one of my favorite lines in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent asks a local bureaucrat why the bypass has to be built through his home. The man replies, “It’s a bypass, you gotta build bypasses.”
One can only hope the bypass doesn’t do what it has done to towns like Clarksdale.
Central District Transportation commissioner Willie Simmons was at Rotary on Thursday to talk about this project and others in the area.
He said the project is ahead of schedule and the section from Leland to Highway 1 in Greenville should be complete in about two years.
The contract for the second section, from Highway 1 to the Mississippi River Bridge will be let before or about the same time as the first section is complete.
The second section of the project is on property that already had some improvements from the initial construction more than 10 years ago. Simmons said the old road bed would have to rehabbed to be used.
Simmons went over a laundry list of road projects which are either underway or on the books to be completed in Washington County.
A funny speaker, Simmons joked he needed to look for a house in Greenville because the folks in Cleveland said he had been sending too much money to Washington County for projects.
Simmons also talked about the need for an increase in funding for the road system in Mississippi to be brought up to par.
The current lottery, which he helped shepherd through the legislator as a Senator, is supposed to supply about $80 million per year for road construction and repair.
As a comparative, to four-lane the stretch of Highway 61 from Leland to Arcola, about 10 miles, would cost $30 million. (A project Simmons said may be on the horizon.)
The comparative pittance of funding supplied by the lottery was always a boondoggle. The state needs billions to repair its aging roads and bridges.
It’s getting some of those billions from the federal government in infrastructure funding these last couple of years, but at some point, that funding will stop.
If Mississippians wants to repair our roads, we’re going to have to pay for those roads ourselves.
A lottery is not the way to do it. A gas tax would solve the problem and even allow some out-of-state folks to kick in a few dollars when they buy gas in our state.
The reticence of people in Mississippi to get behind anything with the word tax associated has produced the current state of infrastructure affairs.
But, if Mississippians are fine with the roads and bridges the way they are, then they’ll stay that way whether they should be or not.
That’s the beauty and the devil of our system.
The people choose.
Sometimes they choose incorrectly.
But, for those who made the choice, it’s the correct decision.
Jon Alverson is proud to be the publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.com or call him at 662-335-1155.
