NATCHEZ, Miss. –The Adams County Jail’s air conditioner is broken and county supervisors decided Tuesday to pay jailers more as they endure the heat for the next few weeks until the system is fixed.
The Board of Supervisors voted to pay county jailers an extra $150 a week after Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten noted how difficult it is to work during the AC outage. A special part has to be fabricated for the air-conditioning system to run, and it could be at least three to four weeks for this, said county board attorney Scott Slover.
“There are a couple of other challenges that our aging jail is facing,” Slover said.
The county board on Tuesday closed the public out of discussions about prospective lawsuits over jail conditions at the 46-year-old detention center.
Built in 1975, the jail is now substandard and has suffered various structural problems in recent years that include a leaky roof, mold, poor ventilation, crumbling exterior bricks and malfunctioning cell locks.
Adams County supervisors for several years have been considering the costs building a new jail, which a 2014 study estimated would cost about $7 million. Thebuilding – located on the corner of State and Wall streets by the Adams County Courthouse – has been the subject of lawsuits and court orders for improvements to be made.
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Adams County and Natchez officials have formed an agreement for using the $492,000 the federal government allocated in May to assess the extent of pollution at the old Natchez tire plant and other contaminated sites that local leaders hope can be reused.
The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the agreement that the city Board of Aldermen initiated last week. It outlines the process for using the federal EPA grant.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in May that Natchez-Adams County is among 151 communities in the country to be awarded “Brownfields” grants.
While city and county officials have broadly discussed assessing sites in the downtown area extending from the Mississippi River bluffs to Martin Luther King Street, the main focus is on the old Armstrong tire plant in north Natchez.
The city-owned property on Kelly and South Concord streets has been the source of pollution with gasoline and cleaning solvents seeping into groundwater. The tire-making factory – which Armstrong began operating in 1939 — closed in 2001 after Titan acquired it. City leaders have for years tried unsuccessfully to lure another industry there, and Mayor Dan Gibson has continued pushing for this since taking office in July 2020.
The $492,000 EPA grant will pay for analyzing how serious pollution is at local sites and the costs of cleaning them to be redeveloped for new industrial use.
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