Three bids on a long-awaited project to widen the Yazoo Diversion Canal have all come in over the federal government’s estimated cost of the project, meaning more delay is possible.

Warren County supervisors heard from Port Commission staff member Jim Pilgrim on the matter during their informal meeting Thursday.

The lowest bid was by 4H Construction Corporation of Cleveland, Miss., at $4,660,765. It topped the government, $3,630,963, by almost exactly $1 million.

Other bidders were LW Matheson Inc., of Burlington, Iowa at $5,431,776 and by Pine Bluff Sand & Gravel of Pine Bluff, Ark., at $7,225,800.

Options that remain for covering the gap include going back to Congress to lobby for more federal dollars or scaling back the project by deleting work north of Glass Bayou, dependent on a 10 percent credit from an undetermined non-federal source.

Finding that source outside the realm of the federal government to front the $1.3 million, plus securing an extra $522,000 in federal funds, is the best option, Pilgrim said.

&#8220The only problem is where we would come up with the extra million,” he said.

The canal was excavated more than 100 years ago after the Mississippi River, which formerly passed City Front, changed course. It rerouted the Yazoo River and connected the Mississippi with what has been developed as the Port of Vicksburg.

Plans for the widening call for turning a 150-foot bottom width into a 250-foot bottom width from the junction with the Mississippi River to Glass Bayou and a 200-foot bottom from there to the entrance to the harbor channel.

Officials began looking at widening the canal in the 1990s, when the tonnage moved to and from the Mississippi River and the E.W. Haining Industrial Center increased from 3 million tons to 5 million from 1990 to 1992.

Tonnage since 2004 has nearly tripled, Pilgrim said, and with the promise of business activity ranging from the ethanol plant planned by Ergon Ethanol Inc., and Bunge North American Inc., and a natural gas pipeline by Gulf South Pipelines, the timing remains favorable to benefit the area, despite not having the answers to supervisors’ questions on how long the project will take to complete and the ability of the low bidder to do the job.

In other business, the board: