Warren County officials’ &#8220Plan B” to close financing on the Yazoo Diversion Canal widening project may not be needed after President Bush Thursday signed a $464 billion spending bill that closes out last year’s unfinished budget business.

The Warren County Board of Supervisors and the executive director of the Warren County Port Commission discussed in an informal meeting Thursday a backup plan to cover a $615,000 shortfall on the project if Congress failed to act on the continuing resolution that funds nine unfinished appropriations.

The deadline to extend that resolution was Thursday.

The long-planned canal project, which would also deepen the canal dug by the Corps more than a century ago, faced a critical year in 2007, with a construction bid in hand but cost estimates and Army Corps funding being threatened by an anti-earmark stance of the 110th Congress.

This morning, Warren County Administrator John Smith said although the spending bill was approved, it might be a couple of weeks before Corps officials sort through details of the legislation.

The spending bill &#8220is an overall thing,” Smith said. &#8220What the Corps said the other day is that it might take them two weeks to find out all the details. Being optimistic, it appears to be promising.”

Jim Pilgrim, executive director of the port commission, said the total cost of the project is $5.3 million, with the City of Vicksburg, through the Mississippi Development Authority and federal block grants, and the port commission sharing $1.8 million of the cost. The rest would be financed through the federal government.

&#8220If President Bush signs that (spending) bill, the money should be coming,” Pilgrim said Thursday.

Bush said the Democratic-led Congress approved the bill by shifting &#8220funding needed for our armed forces to unrequested domestic programs.”

&#8220The Democrats wanted to take the earmarks out, and Republicans agreed by doing that to let the Corps make the decision on where the money should go,” Smith said.

The mammoth legislation pulls together nine unfinished spending bills funding foreign aid and every domestic agency budget except the Homeland Security Department. This budget work should have been completed months ago but was delayed because of election-year pressures.

In meetings last week between Corps officers, local economic development officials and city and county appointees, the subject was a shortfall of $615,000 in funding the project. Pilgrim told officials if federal money did not become available, the port commission would have to cover the shortfall with reserve funds.

A $4.7 million construction bid for the work was extended to March 20 by 4H Construction of Cleveland, Miss., the firm that came in lowest of three whose offers overshot the government estimate.

The canal extends from the Mississippi River past City Front to the E.W. Haining Industrial Center and Vicksburg Harbor. Widening the channel is seen as a must to keep the port viable for business expansion because it would handle larger tows and be more efficient for companies doing business on the port.

When first conceived, plans for the widening called for turning a 190-foot bottom width into a 260-foot bottom width from the junction with the Mississippi River to Glass Bayou and a 185-foot bottom from there to the entrance to the harbor channel.

Also Thursday, Pilgrim told supervisors the T-dock on which a crane at the Port of Vicksburg is being replaced was shut down about a week ago after cracks were found in the dock’s pilings.

He said it will cost about $800,000 to rehab the dock and $1.7 million to replace it. Pilgrim recommended repairing the structure, which could take six months.

Warren County was awarded $206,000 from the Delta Regional Authority to further defray the cost of replacing the bridge crane at the port.

Acting through the port commission, the county had already secured $678,000 in grant funds toward the project in 2006 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

The commission is expected to kick in about $390,000 from its own funds to supplement USDA grant funds carried over and still awaited. Altogether, the $2 million effort will replace the current 15-ton bridge crane that handles routine movement of goods to and from barges, rail cars and trucks.

ON THE AGENDA

In other matters Thursday: