Homeowners again will seek to fill lake|[9/27/06]

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Once again, residents of Lake Forest Subdivision will attempt to fill up their lake – with water, not weeds.

On Sunday, they will gather at 2 p.m. in the backyard of Bobby and Robbie Anderson at 417 Lake Forest Drive, a spot from which they can see the grass- and weed-covered lakebed, dry since a damaged overflow pipe caused it to drain overnight in February 2003.

The subdivision has about 153 homes, including about 37 abutting the 17-acre lake off Oak Ridge Road, said Lake Forest resident Louis Logue, who was elected vice president of the re-formed homeowners’ group when they gathered this month.

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At the eastern edge of the lake is a dam about 300 feet wide. The 2003 damage was to a vertical pipe that leads to a horizontal pipe under the dam and to lower ground, said Bobby Anderson, who was elected president of the homeowners’ group.

Shortly after the lake drained the homeowners’ association hired a Jackson engineering company, Aqua Engineering Services LLC, to recommend a repair plan. Aqua recommended that all or part of the dam, including the horizontal pipe under it and the vertical pipe, be removed and replaced and an auxiliary spillway be added to allow the system to handle &#8220100-year” flooding, engineer Billy Colson said.

The lowest bid the homeowners’ association has received for the work is about $40,000. The association has about half that in cash and pledges, Anderson said. A main focus of the current effort is to raise the balance of the required funds.

Logue said the cash and pledges have come from residents of about 40 households and about 100 have yet to be contacted about the renewed effort. Logue said attempts to contact some of those residents in person have been unsuccessful and that he is trying to collect their e-mail addresses.

&#8220One of the reasons I think people ought to be enthusiastic and concerned about getting the lake back is property value,” Anderson said. &#8220If you’ve got a home out here and if you wanted to sell it, I think you’re probably going to find the property value is not as much as it was when the lake was there.”

Robbie Anderson has lived in the subdivision for more than 20 years. Bobby Anderson, a retired Vicksburg postmaster who is the pastor at the First Baptist Church in Satartia in Yazoo County, said he moved there when the couple married, within the past year.

&#8220I remember coming out here for various reasons and what a beautiful lake it was and then to wind up living here, the lake not being here, it just prompted me to try my best to get something done about it. So I started talking it up and found out that there were a lot of people interested in getting the lake back.”

In addition to repairing the damage to the drainage system, the homeowners’ association plans to begin other programs such as ones for neighborhood watch, a garden club and a group to welcome newcomers to the area, Bobby Anderson said.