Unless it rains, repair of a slope failure off Washington Street near the closed Clark Street bridge should be complete by the end of next week. The bridge will remain closed indefinitely.

“They’re just finishing up on the dirt work now,” Vicksburg Public Works Director Bubba Rainer said Wednesday. “When you’re trying to finish something like this it’s hard to pin down an exact completion day — there’s a lot of little ends to tie up — but certainly I’m hoping by next week it should be through.”

Kanza Construction began the work on April 10 with intent to finish in 30 days. Several rainouts have pushed the project back, Rainer said. About 12,500 yards of dirt are being used to fill in the gulch, which was encroaching toward the main north-south city artery. Boulders were used as a foundation not far from where the slope meets the parking lot of DiamondJack’s Casino. 

With a change order for the additional time and materials required, the work cost $489,805. The city received a grant for up to $400,000 from the National Resource Conservation Service, which will pay about 75 percent of the cost of soil. However, city coffers will have to finance the repairing and replacing of storm drains and sewers that were ruined in the slope failure. Some underground AT&T phone and Internet lines also were ruined in a slide in March, and have since been repaired.

The continuing delay will be the affiliated project to replace the 80-year-old Clark Street bridge with a railroad tunnel. The slope stabilization work was to be included in the tunnel project, which is being administered and overseen by Kansas City Southern. However, rapid erosion and widening of the gully in March forced the city to declare the situation an emergency and put the work under contract separately.

The city set aside $5 million of a $16.9 million bond issue in 2006 to replace the bridge, which has been closed to traffic since Jan. 23. The Federal Railroad Administration is to reimburse the city $4 million of the cost of the tunnel.

Kanza is one of three companies vying for the tunnel project contract. Bids taken this spring came in at $9 to $10 million — nearly double the original estimates — which has sent KCS and bidding companies back to the negotiating table. Rainer said officials believe a contract not to exceed $8.5 million can be negotiated, but the additional funding has yet to be secured. Mayor Laurence Leyens and others have been discussing the funding shortfall with Mississippi Department of Transportation officials.

“We’ve gotten a positive reaction from (MDOT Executive Director) Butch Brown,” said Rainer. “He’s saying he is going to do everything he can for us, and MDOT has indicated they feel pretty good about some pot of money that we can access.”

Rainer said the additional funds could come as federal stimulus dollars or via the MDOT regular budget, which has been freed up in some areas due to the influx of $24 million the department received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to construct and repair buildings, roads and bridges.

“We need to solidify the funding so we can get on with it,” said Rainer. “Once the money is in place, we can get a crew to work fairly quickly.”

Rainer estimated the tunnel project will take about one year to complete once it starts. Traffic on Washington Street continues to be detoured through City Park while the Clark Street bridge is closed.

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Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com