The Board of Mayor and Aldermen have cancelled the city’s contract with IMS Engineers of Jackson, the project engineer for the 592 auxiliary waterline project.

The board Wednesday voted 3-0 to cancel the 5-year contract with the company, which was hired in 2010 to do the engineering for the project to construct a backup waterline from the city’s water treatment plant on Haining Road to an existing line on Jackson Street.

North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield, who has been involved with the planning for the line, said the dismissal of IMS did not mean the project was dead.

“We’re just going to be moving in a different direction,” he said. He said the city has not selected a new engineer for the project, but Mayor George Flaggs said the board may announced a new firm for the project at the board’s Dec. 7 meeting.

City Attorney Nancy Thomas said the board was exercising a provision in its contract with IMS that allows either party to cancel the contract with 10 days’ notice. According to a letter to IMS, the board’s decision was based in part on the bids for the project that were opened Aug. 10 and were more than double the project’s $3.565 million budget.

Four companies submitted bids on the project. The $8.57 million bid from T.L. Wallace Construction of Columbia was the highest of the four, with DirtWorks Inc. of Vicksburg’ coming in at $8.346 million. S.J. Louis Construction of Texas and Hemphill construction of Florence had the lowest bids of $7.626 million and $7.329 million, respectively.

One of the reasons for the high bids, city officials believed, was the proposed route IMS recommended for the line.

According to the project plans, the 30-inch waterline would leave the city’s water treatment plant on Haining Road and go east to North Washington, where it crossed under the Kansas City Southern Railroad tracks to the east side of North Washington Street and then south along North Washington Street to a point south of Vicksburg National Cemetery, where it crossed the Military Park property to Fort Hill Drive. It then ran south on Fort Hill to Cherry Street to connect with an existing city line on Jackson Street.

Work on the waterline began in 2010, after a landslide at the construction of the Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center threatened the city’s main waterline. The project is financed in part by a $2.45 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 592 grant, which gave the project its name, with the city paying the balance.

IMS Engineers was hired to handle the water project in November 2010 during the administration of former Mayor Paul Winfield. The company replaced the Jackson engineering firm Allen & Hoshall, which had been contracted for engineering services to the city for 20 years.

Planning for the project then lapsed until February 2014, when Mayor George Flaggs Jr. revived it.