HANCOCK COUNTY
The Board of Supervisors learned this week that the U.S. Corps of Engineers has issued a permit for the county’s new jail site on Highway 90 near Springwood Park.
The Corps permit constitutes the final hurdle supervisors needed to cross before purchasing the property and moving forward with the project, Board President Rocky Pullman said Friday.
In December, the board gained environmental clearance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, after the county published a finding of no significant impact in September.
The Corps permit was necessary because the county wants to fill about 12 acres of previously undisturbed wetlands.
The new jail is expected to be built on 53 acres of land adjacent to the NASA buffer zone on the north side of Hwy. 90.
The budget for the jail project is $37.5 million.
It comes from the $200 million Ground Zero Action Plan through HUD.
Supers plan to construct a new jail, sheriff’s office, and justice court at the site.
Once the property is purchased, the county can take bids for the project, Artigues said.
Pullman said he expects the county to purchase the property within a month and then move forward with taking bids for the jail.
Perez Architects–a New Orleans-based engineering and architecture group–has been working with the sheriff and judges on the plans for the facility.
Camp, Dresser, and McKee (CDM) is the engineering firm for the project and Whites Construction will be the construction manager.
Final plans should include a 312-bed jail and a justice court with a capacity of 300 people, Pullman said.
The sheriff’s department’s administrative offices will also be included in the 50-acre facility.
Currently, the sheriff’s department and justice court are located in Kiln and the temporary jail is on Longfellow Drive in Bay St. Louis.
The new jail will include seven blocks, a booking center, medical facility, recreation yard, kitchen, laundry, and administrative offices.
Each one of the blocks will contain a series of cells which will be capable of holding different number of inmates. For instance, in the low security block, the cell will be capable of holding six to eight inmates, whereas in the maximum security area, each cell will only hold one to two inmates, officials said.
The facility is expected to be about 100,000 total square-feet.
Sheriff’s Administrator Ronnie Cuevas said last year, that to comply with current state and federal jail standards, he estimates that the jail will need 48 officers–12 per shift–to man the facility.
Currently, there are only eight full-time correctional officers and three part-time officers employed at the jail.
Prior to Katrina, the jail on Court Street held a maximum of 132 prisoners and had 20 full-time officers with four part-timers.
To offset some of the operation and maintenance costs, the county plans to detain up to 80 state trusty inmates or even federal immigration prisoners, Pullman said.
“We are building a bigger compound and we hope the state and INS prisoners balance the operations costs,” Pullman said. “That is a good plan.”
BY: Dwayne Bremer
