By Fred Guarino

The Selma Times-Journal

 

MOSSES — Jim Byard Jr., state director, and Bea Forniss, community development division chief, for the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs were on hand Thursday to help the town of Mosses celebrate 33 years of incorporation with the presentation of a $350,000 Community Development Block Grant for sewer hookups.

The grant is for the first phase of a sewer project that will connect 90 homes in Mosses to the town’s sewer system.

“So far, out of the first 90, there is no one who will have to pay anything to be hooked to it,” said Mosses Mayor Walter S. Hill.

Hill said after everyone is connected there will be a “minimum fee for sewer” and “that will be very small compared to the cost that they have to incur when it comes to having to pump their septic systems out and having to replace them and so forth.”

Byard said that on behalf of Gov. Robert Bentley he was pleased to be in Lowndes County and Mosses.

“Infrastructure is vitally important… businesses cannot locate in a community and will not locate in a community unless there is infrastructure,” he said. “Water and sewer are vitally important to businesses.”

Byard said Bentley ran on the pledge that he would not accept a salary until Alabama was at full employment.

“The first step to a good paying job is infrastructure. The first step is sewer,” Byard said.

Pauline Johnson, a resident of Mosses who lives just down the street from the municipal complex, said she has lived her house for 44 years and on a septic tank. “I’m so thankful to God for this grant,” she said.

Johnson said she’s had so many problems with her field lines, and being on low income, she said she could hardly pay anyone to put the field lines down.

Forniss who accompanied Byard to the grant presentation said she started out as a teacher Central Elementary in Lowndes County.

“It’s always a wonderful thing when we do sewer or extend streets, or when we do roads or any of the things that we do to help the citizens have a better quality of life,” she said.

Hill said the next phase of the sewer project in Mosses would be “to take every household business in this community off the reliance of septic systems” and tying them into the sewer system. “This will allow this community to then look beyond the present day and begin to recruit business and industry.”

He said the phase to connect the 90 homes to the sewer system will be complete by December of this year.

Council members Teryl Myles and Willie B. Hill were also on hand for the grant presentation.

Mayor Hill thanked Gov. Bentley for helping communities and accepted the grant on behalf of the 1,053 residents of Mosses.