A lack of pilots and engine problems have forced Warren County Supervisors to close the Kings Point Ferry until further notice.

The ferry is the only public access to the Kings Point area since construction of the Yazoo Diversion Canal in 1903 cut it off from the mainland of Warren County. Kings Point is an island made up mostly of hunting camps and timber farming. The ferry runs daily from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. carrying hunters and workers across the canal. Its busiest periods are deer and turkey seasons, and the peak fishing time.

“We had one pilot quit and the other is deceased,” county administrator John Smith said Monday. “And we had two contract people (pilots), and they’re gone. We need to hire two pilots.”

“They’re (the contractors) working at regular jobs,” District 1 Supervisor John Arnold said. “So right now, we don’t have a ferry.”

County Road manager Larry Flowers, whose department is over the ferry, said one of the contract pilots will be unavailable for 14 days, but was not sure of the other. Flowers said he is preparing an advertisement for pilots, telling the supervisors, “We’re at the point right now where we don’t have a choice but to shut the ferry down once we get everyone off the island.”

He told the board he wants to shut the service down now so road department employees can overhaul the ferry’s engine. He said the parts have already been received for the work, which could take about eight days to complete.

The Board of Supervisors in June paid more than about $200,000 for major repairs to the ferry, including work on the push boat engine assemblies, gearbox engine assemblies, propeller assemblies, and repairs to its bumpers, handrails, ramps, repairing a wheelhouse leak around the searchlight and repairing the horn on the wheelhouse

The present boat for the ferry was purchased for about $600,000 in June 2005. The ferry was damaged in February 2006 when a ramp on the ferry broke away and sank in the canal when the vessel pulled away from Kings Point Island after dropping off a vehicle.

“And maybe by the time we have a pilot, it will be up and running,” Flowers said.

In another matter, Pablo Diaz, executive director for the Vicksburg-Warren County Chamber of Commerce and the county’s economic development director, asked the board to request the county be included in a series of policy changes proposed by the Mississippi Foreign Trade Zone board.

Foreign trade zones allow companies to get imported materials tariff-free to manufacture products that are exported and sold outside the country.

“For certain companies, that is a very important thing, because they can reduce their overall costs,” Diaz said.

He told the board the proposed changes would shorten the time it takes for a company to apply for Foreign Trade Zone status and would allow the company to locate anywhere in a county.

Traditionally, he said it takes up to five months for a company to get a tax-free FTZ designation, and the company would have to locate at the Port of Vicksburg or Ceres Industrial Park, which presently are the county’s only foreign trade zone areas.

The change in the law reduces the amount of time to get the FTZ designation to about 30 days, and allows the county in a free trade zone to give FTZ designation to a company that locates anywhere in the county.

“If we have a project going in on Highway 61 South, and FTZ was important to them, in the past they had to go to the port or Ceres,” Diaz said. “If we do this, we should be able in theory to offer these new changes. It will make us more competitive and hopefully we could get the manufacturing jobs and the payroll.”