Quitman, MS - As reported back in July, the Archusa water park spillway dam breach, turning the once filled lake into a bed a dry ground. Now the City of Quitman Mayor: Steve Watkins, is working hard to help get the dam repaired. “We have to figure out first what caused all this problem, why it failed, why the dam failed, why the emergency spillway failed, what needs to be done to get it back in operation.”
The mayor, along with Clarke County Board of Supervisors, and Pat Harrison Waterway district have written a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Planning Assistance to States Program and applied for a federal grant for technical support. “We’re very fortunate to have our representatives, our senators from the state and even on a national level to support us through this, because it’s going to take a big effort from a lot of people to make this happen, it’s not going to be one person behind it, it's going to be a group of us.”
According to Pat Harrison Waterway district, the Archusa Water Park normally receives up to 90,000 visitors a year. Due to the dam breach, Mayor Watkins expects the lack of visitors to not only affect the park, but the city as well. “Eventually it rolls down to where the city is affected because of lack of sales tax revenue, so as the months go by, that will be more and more significant, people will start feeling thar loss of visitors coming into our area.”
While the lake is closed to the park, residents are still able to come visit the cabins and camp.
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