A $10 million grain terminal project was saved Monday as the Leflore County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the weight limit on a county road needed for farmer access.
The purchase option for the location of Express Grain Terminals expires July 5. Investors had become skittish about involvement with the project because there had not been approval for traffic of heavy trucks, said project leader John Coleman at the June 11 board meeting.
The project is to be done in District 4. A decision on it could not be made at the June 11 meeting because District 4 Supervisor Wayne Self was out of town on family business.
"We are delighted that the county decided to raise the weight limit on the road," Coleman said Monday. "Now we are ready to move on with our project and begin construction this summer … We want to thank all the supervisors."
Express Grain predicts it will break ground by August and complete the project by May 2008, Coleman said.
Previous discussion of the county road, which carries a load-bearing weight of 57,500 pounds and needed to be increased to 84,000 pounds, involved questions of safety.
Self said Monday he had discussed the road with county engineering firm Willis Engineering and would like to raise the road's weight limit. The county would just have to "maintain it as best we can," he said.
"I'd just like to go ahead and move forward with it, because I don't want it to look like we're holding up progress," Self said.
The project would be beneficial economically, he said. "They got great ideas coming to that area," Self said.
Board President Robert Moore again raised a question of safety for citizens if the road became damaged from heavy truck traffic. He also mentioned the possibility that the county could be sued if an accident occurred.
The road currently receives heavy traffic from those traveling to Morgan City and Swiftown.
"(The road is) not going to catastrophically fail overnight," said District 1 Supervisor Phil Wolfe. The county could allow Express Grain to begin construction and easily apply for grants for road reinforcement when it could show a successful operation, Wolfe said.
"I think we won't run into quite the burden that we think we are at this point," he said.
Self agreed that there was time for grant applications.
"It won't be in operation for this harvesting, so we're got a year," he said.
Self made a motion to increase the weight limit on County Road 512 from Highway 49 to Highway 7 S. to 84,000 pounds.
The motion was unanimously approved, on the condition that Express Grain would close on the land purchase.
Also Monday, the board gave a go-ahead to Deputy Richard Roberts to apply for a federal grant that would pay for the salary of a full-time DUI officer for the county for the year.
Roberts said he would like to provide DUI education to students at Amanda Elzy and Leflore County high schools and increase the DUI arrests by 50 percent.
Roberts said that compared to Greenwood and the Highway Patrol, county DUI arrests are much lower, but the number of accidents is much higher. Some of the accidents are alcohol-related, he said.
Due to the recent approval of three extra deputies, the Sheriff's Department would be able to spare one deputy for a DUI program, said Chancery Clerk Sam Abraham.
