POPLARVILLE —
River County supervisors on Thursday awarded a monitoring and grant control contract to Dungan Engineering of Picayune.
Dungan Engineering was one of five firms invited to bid on the contract, which essentially is a management contract to oversee the major project of debris pickup and cleanup in Pearl River County following Hurricane Isaac. The major contract to actually do the work will be awarded to one of five companies asked to bid on the project at another supervisors’ board meeting at 9 a.m. Monday.
The five companies asked to bid on the cleanup were: Holliday Construction, Huey Stockstill, Inc., Hensley R. Lee, Ricky Philips and Creel Excavation.
County administrator Adrain Lumpkin, Jr., said all five firms are headquartered in Pearl River County and each has a bond rating that would allow them to bid on the project. In other words, they are big enough to handle the job.
Les Dungan of Dungan Engineering said after his company was awarded the bid on monitoring the project that he was hoping that by Wednesday the company awarded the bid to actually pick up and dispose of the debris could start as early as Wednesday.
Hurricane Isaac’s flood waters devastated homes and communities along East and West Hobolochitto creeks, the main Hobolochitto Creek and Pearl River and Wolf River. Extensive flooding was reported all along those rivers and creeks and hit hardest were Westchester Heights in West Picayune and neighborhoods in East Picayune.
At least one rain gauge at the Picayune wastewater treatment plant recorded 22 inches of rain over the three days Isaac’s winds pounded the county and his rains soaked the area, which slowly raked the county from Tuesday to Friday of last week, at one time stalling.
Pickup of debris will be monitored by GPS.
Bidding on the grant management and monitoring portion of the project was True North of Fort Worth, Tex.; SAIC of Maitland, Fla.; Schaus Professional Services of Ellisville, Miss.; Dungan; and Thompson Consulting Services, Biloxi.
The bid was not necessarily awarded to the lowest bidder, said Lumpkin, but each company was graded on performance categories, and Dungan had the highest score. The board of supervisors acted as the entity reviewing and then actually awarding the bid.
The amount of the bids were not announced at the meeting.
The bid awarded to Dungan on Thursday paves the way for the county to invite the main bidders to do the work to submit their bids by Monday at 9 a.m. Supervisors will meet again on Monday and select the construction company to do the work, and the company should begin picking up debris by Wednesday, according to Dungan.
All debris will be deposited in the Central Land Fill at Millard. There will be no burning.
Debris has accumulated quickly, said supervisor and board president J. Patrick Lee.
He said extensive piles have been deposited along subdivision streets and county roads and was beginning to rot and smell. “That’s why we are moving as fast as we can under the emergency declaration so we can get this stuff out of here and to the landfill,” Lee said.
FEMA will pay for 75 percent of the cost of removing the debris, and the county and the state will split the remaining 25 percent as local matching funds.
Debris in all of the county and in the county’s two municipalities — Picayune and Poplarville — will be included in the pickup process.
Officials said they hoped to start picking up both in the north and south ends of the county at the same time on Wednesday.
Officials have not released a final estimate on the number of homes damaged, but an early estimate was that as many as 600 homes received flood damage. An estimated 200 people had to be evacuated by boat from their flooded homes, officials said.
The pickup project will be tightly and strictly monitored through a GPS system, officials said.
Local News
Related Photos
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From left are county planner Ed Pinero, Jr., supervisors Joyce Culpepper and J. Patrick Lee, board attorney Joe Montgomery, supervisors Sandy Kane Smith and Dennis Dedeaux, and county administrator Adrain Lumpkin, Jr. Supervisor Anthony Hales, Sr., was absent. Lumpkin sorts bids as supervisors get ready to tabulate and grade them. The grant management and monitoring bid was awarded to Dungan Engineering of Picayune, and the actual debris pick up bid will be awarded on Monday to one of five county construction companies. Debris pick up should begin by Wednesday, said Dungan. Pinero is also mayor of Picayune. Poplarville Mayor Billy Spiers was on-hand, too. The pick up area will include all the county and within the county’s two cities — Picayune and Poplarville. David A. Farrell
Supervisors award monitoring, management bid for cleanup to Dungan Engineering
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