Vicksburg has formally turned down a $3.9 million grant Warren County supervisors sought and won to clean out overgrown creeks that still run through several neighborhoods, citing the cost of continuing maintenance as the reason.

A three-sentence letter from Mayor Laurence Leyens confirms neither government wants the responsibility.

The money was awarded to the county in April 2008 as part of a Katrina-related block grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development via the Mississippi Development Authority. Maintaining the bayous had long been championed by District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon, a driving force behind the board’s choice of the project when asked in 2007 to come up with ideas that could qualify for the grant.

County officials may seek to narrow the scope of the project from cleaning the 50 or so miles of winding streams to reinforcing canal walls.

“Thank you for your offer of the above MDA grant to the City of Vicksburg,” Leyens said in the letter to Board President Richard George concerning the sponsorship of monies to clear debris from Glass, Hatcher and Stouts bayous. “Unfortunately, because of the same reasons the Board of Supervisors intends to decline the grant, we must decline it as well.”

In addition to maintenance, the project would require complicated right-of-way easements because many private property lines run to the center of the bayous. A drainage control district could be established if the county decided to pursue the project. It would be funded by add-ons to property taxes, an option from which the board has shied away.

Changing the definitions of the grant may prove impossible, as a 2010 deadline approaches for acceptance of the grant. Still, supervisors looked to modify the task description to simply covering known areas of weakness along the bayou walls with riprap and keeping whatever work is involved to areas with limited utilities such as water and gas lines.

“We need to get this thing where we have no maintenance other than spraying,” District 4 Supervisor Bill Lauderdale said.

Vicksburg’s $1.3 million portion of the Katrina block grants are aimed at a new fire station and other improvements at Vicksburg Municipal Airport. Efforts there center on determining whether 51 percent of the surrounding area’s income qualifies as low- or moderate-income, which is a component of all community development block grants.

Thirty-nine counties and municipalities in the state were eligible for the disaster recovery funds, part of a larger $5.48 billion Katrina recovery package awarded to Mississippi from HUD.

Selmon’s district is inside Vicksburg and the creeks flow through the back yards of many homes, mostly in low-income neighborhoods. Flooding from the waterways that drain most of the city is rare, but vermin, insects and odors are a continuing problem, as are privately generated debris and vegetation that must be cleared to keep the water flowing.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.