Water tower will boost economic growth
RIDGELAND — A million-gallon water tank on the south end of the Highland Colony Parkway will improve the city’s water storage capacity by about 30 percent.
A groundbreaking was held this week where the tank will go up at 414 Highland Colony Parkway. Mayor Gene F. McGee said the project is vital to the city’s further growth.
“The purpose of this project is to provide more capacity for all of our water system customers from a site more centrally located on the portion of our system that is west of the interstate (I-55),” McGee said.
Waggoner Engineering and Hemphill Construction are handling the project, which is expected to be completed sometime next year.
McGee, Public Works Director Alan Hart and a host of city officials and dignitaries were on hand for the ground-breaking on Wednesday morning.
McGee told the crowd that when he took office about 35 years ago, the Mississippi Department of Health sent him a letter saying the city’s water system was not up to standard and was hindering growth possibilities. At the time, the city had a Class 10 fire rating, which is the worst rating a municipality can have.
McGee said he got to work on improving the city’s water system. The city’s current rating is Class 4, and he noted that this project could help lower that rating in the future.
McGee called the water system “vital” to a city and said he was glad Ridgeland continues to improve and meet the high standards set by his administration and the aldermen’s vision.
“Ridgeland is blessed to have one of the finest water systems anywhere in the country,” McGee said.
At the ceremony, Hart said this project is the result of the mayor and board’s “vision and expectation” that the city has the best water system available.
The project has a current price tag of about $9.5 million. Hart said the city has funded the project largely through grants including a portion of the $5.9 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds the city received from the federal government related to the COVID-19 Pandemic and matching funds from Mississippi Municipal and County Water Infrastructure grants.
“There are very, very few local dollars going toward this project,” Hart said.
The tank will draw water from the Sparta Aquifer, an underground water source underneath a portion of at least six states, including running from Louisiana to Alabama at its widest and stretching from Mississippi up into Kentucky.
Hart said the tower would be 150 feet tall, and they would have to drill 1,300 feet — or four football fields — to reach the aquifer.
Hart said the water in the tower will weigh more than eight million pounds and the project will use about four million pounds of concrete.