County continues to work on Dogwood Lakes pipe leak

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A leak discovered in a Dogwood Lakes pipe is continuing to be assessed by officials and consultants in Holmes County, who are looking to eventually resolve the matter.

County Emergency Management Director Barry Lee was tasked with looking for a pump from other counties.

Engineer John Feeney with Alday-Howell Engineering, one of the County’s engineers, addressed the matter during a recent Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting.

“Y’all tasked us with making sure the emergency action plan was followed. (County Project Director) David Corbin is the administrator and he did everything he is supposed to do up to this point, which is notify the state that there’s a failure,” Feeney said. “They want to see the lake drawn down to a point that it’s not going to fail anymore and our task order is to do a permanent fix, to design those plans.”

Drawing the lake down would be a continuous operation until the leak is fixed, Feeney said.

The design fee is $35,575. 

County Clerk of Court Sam Bailey is waiting “for a couple more sections to give him back their requests” when it comes to the County’s upcoming annual budget, BOCC Chairman Jeff Good said.

“We called for projections. We’ve got nothing from the state,” Corbin said. “We have nothing from our insurance carriers other than a projection. I can go ahead and tell you right now there’s going to be an increase on health insurance. To what degree, we don’t know.”

The amount of revenue that will be lost or gained for the County was also unknown at the time of the discussion.

Designing a pump will be cheaper but there will be issues “every time it rains,” Feeney said.

The County bought a “nice pump” but decided they didn’t need it and couldn’t afford it due to budget constraints, Corbin said.

“We looked up a quote,” Feeney said of pump rental costs. “It was about $2,000 a month for a pump.”

Someone would need to man the pump. Commissioner Earl Stafford said the pump could be rented as needed and wouldn’t be $2,000 every month. Starting the process on the design fee was halted for now and the BOCC instead voted to lease a pump as needed. 

“There ain’t too many options you can go,” Corbin said. “You either fix it or you pump it or you draw it down and fix it.”

Stafford said he didn’t want to spend the $35,575 until more information is known, in case things fall through. 

Feeney said there may be some emergency funding available since the matter has been deemed an emergency by state agencies.

Given recent heavy rain conditions, Corbin said he strongly suggested Feeney and the BOCC figure out a way to relieve some of the dam pressure.

“We don’t want complete failure,” Corbin said.

Feeney said he agreed.

“The dam itself is not leaking. It’s the pipe that’s leaking,” Feeney said. “The pipe is what you have to fix. If it was the dam that was leaking, I think it would be a bigger issue. (The Florida Division of Emergency Management) would be more adamant about seeing something happen.”

Lee said a pump would be good to also have for floods and with hurricane season starting.