David Odom has lived on St. Mary Street for 20 years and knows firsthand the fear of flash floods.
“Rain just terrorized every one of us,” he said, describing the experience of residents along St. Mary and St. Ann Streets when Belhaven Creek overflows because of heavy rains.
“I have a 100-foot barrier in the back of my home. There’s a man who built an entire wall around a portion of his home. There are people who sandbag. There are people who have water go into their primary residence.”
Odom hopes the problems he and his neighbors experience will be alleviated when Hemphill Construction Co. starts work to widen the creek and take other measures so it can accommodate more water. The City Council approved the $2.9-million contract with Hemphill Construction on Oct. 27.
Virgi Lindsay, City Council member who represents Ward 7, which includes Belhaven, began drawing attention to the need for improved drainage in Belhaven in 2001 when she became executive director of the Greater Belhaven Foundation, a position she held for 15 years.
“The main message is this is just the beginning of work that we know needs to be done, but you have to start somewhere,” she said.
The flooding is more widespread than just on St. Mary Street, Lindsay said.
“The flooding stretches from Peachtree Street at Riverside Drive all the way to Laurel Street,” she said. “There are people on Linden who get water in their basement. We think if we alleviate the chokepoint at St. Mary and Piedmont streets that that will possibly help with flooding upstream.”
The contract with Hemphill Construction is the second one for the project. The City Council on Sept. 15 awarded Copeland & Johns a $2.6 million contract to make drainage improvements along the creek, but the company withdrew because it said the city waited too long to award the bid, which was initially advertised on June 2, 2020.
Odom, who lived on St. Mary when he was a boy, said there was minor flooding on the street then because the culvert for the creek was too small, but the amount of water passing along the creek began to dramatically increase in 2010.
Odom said he and other Belhaven residents met with the Harvey Johnson Jr. administration and the public works director and learned that development at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, diminished green space there and the lack of retention ponds as well as development at Belhaven University and the filling in of its lake were to blame for the increase in water flowing through the creek.
“The city brought us together in 2012 for the first meeting,” Odom said. “They talked about what was causing the water but didn’t have the money to fix it.”
Residents thought the project would move ahead during the administration of Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber (2014-2017) after Southern Consultants engineering firm was hired to design a solution. The city’s 1-percent infrastructure sales tax funded the contract, which was about $225,000.
“Then, we couldn’t gain traction until Virgi Lindsay was put into place as a council person,” said Odom, who refers to the project as a tumbleweed, rolling from one mayor’s administration to the next, including Johnson, Frank Melton, Leslie B. McLemore, Johnson’s second term, Chokwe Lumumba, Charles Tillman, Yarber and the current Chokwe Antar Lumumba
Odom credits Lindsay with making sure that Bob Miller, former public works director, and Charles Williams, Ph.D., then city engineer and now public works director, got a firsthand look at the flooding as it happened. Alice Patterson, deputy clerk of the council for Ward 7, was also helpful, he said.
Belhaven residents used the 311 Action Line number to call in or file service requests online related to flooding and that allowed the city to compile the data it needed to make the project a priority, Odom said. Also helpful were residents who made time to meet face-to-face with city leaders, he said.
The first phase of the project is designed to increase capacity by widening portions of the creek, reinforcing creek walls and installing a new box culvert to help water flow better downstream.
Work calls for widening the creek from St. Mary Street to Laurel Street, lining the creek walls with concrete from St. Mary Street to Piedmont Street and adding rip rap from Piedmont to Laurel Street. Widening the creek will increase the capacity, while lining the banks with concrete and rip rap will prevent erosion.
The project also calls for adding a new box culvert under St. Mary Street, which should help move water downstream during peak flow times.
Box culverts are designed to be placed under a bridge or a road to allow water to drain under those structures unimpeded. The current box culvert is too small to handle current runoff levels from heavy storms.
The creek serves the Belhaven drainage basin, which runs from Glenway Drive and Lakeland Drive in the north to Pinehurst Street in the south. East to west, the basin stretches from Museum Boulevard to Veterans Memorial Stadium and Millsaps College.
Flooding in the area has gotten worse in recent years, thanks in part to the increased frequency of heavy storms, as well as increased development upstream.
According to the National Weather Service, more than 99 percent of the basin is developed, with 41.58 percent of it being covered with impervious materials, such as concrete. Those materials do not soak up rainwater like natural ground, increasing runoff that goes into the creek.
