About three-tenths of a mile of open ditch in Kings will be where Warren County tests the worth of a full-scale cleaning effort in the works for more than two years.

County engineers will take quotes on debris-clearing and shoring up walls of a 1,868-foot section of creek near the intersection of Hutson and North Washington streets, supervisors said Monday.

“It’ll be whatever the engineers can do,” Board President Richard George said of the project’s scope, still undecided as supervisors rush to meet a Jan. 1 state-imposed deadline to begin work on a much larger project to be funded by $3.9 million in Katrina-related block grant money secured by the county board in 2008. A small portion was selected so quotes are less likely to exceed $50,000 and trigger a lengthy bid process and miss the deadline. The initial phase involves right of way negotiations with six property owners in the area, engineers said.

Gov. Haley Barbour has said money statewide will be reallocated if communities don’t get started on their hurricane-related projects

The money was allocated in April 2008 as part of a $5.48 billion recovery package awarded to Mississippi from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development via the Mississippi Development Authority. Eligible counties included 49 declared federal disaster areas following Katrina and Rita in 2005. Vicksburg and Warren County were awarded more than $5.2 million for the bayou work and for a new fire station at Vicksburg Municipal Airport, on which construction began earlier this month.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com