By Rupert Howell
Quitman County Circuit Clerk Butch Scipper who serves as chairman of Delta Council’s Transportation Committee urged Panola County supervisors to work with MDOT and their local Mississippi legislative delegation with making funding available to replace 12 deficient bridges between Batesville and Clarksdale a priority.

Speaking to supervisors at their Second District monthly meeting in Batesville Monday morning, Scipper said an estimate to replace those bridges was $50 million and would include obtaining right-of-way and building temporary bridges to reroute traffic during construction as well as moving utilities.

He asked supervisors to assist with helping obtain right-of-way, while encouraging timely utility relocation and also encouraging legislators to not only approve needed funding, but for making it a priority for the coming year and the year after.

He said the project could be completed by fall of 2016.

Scipper called the bridges’ condition a “situation.”

“If one of those bridges falls in, it will be a crisis,” he added.

Scipper was accompanied to the supervisor meeting by Batesville Mayor Jerry Autrey and Alderman Eddie Nabors.

Autrey asked if the proposed improvement would include “four-lane” bridges and learned through Scipper that the new bridges would be built, “On a four-lane footprint.”

Scipper explained temporary wooden bridges would be built to detour traffic around construction at the location of existing bridges. The additional lanes and bridges may later be built on the right-of-way obtained for those temporary bridges.

The Quitman County Chancery Clerk, who is also a farmer, reminded supervisors that Highway 6, “Is the main corridor in this part of the country,” and explained that for an 80,000 pound truck to get to Clarksdale legally, it would have to go to Senatobia then Tunica.

He noted that even a 57,000 lb. truck cold not legally detour to Sardis on Highway 315.

He noted that beer distributors and other commerce movers can not use big trucks on Highway 6.