The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has set a Monday meeting to come up with a permanent fix to a land shift threatening one of Vicksburg’s main water lines.

If the 36-inch concrete pipe located about three feet below Washington Street were to burst, service to the entire city would be lost.

The shift had not moved since being discovered Friday morning, Kavanaugh Breazeale, a Corps spokesman, said Saturday. Contract workers who were doing ground work on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Interpretive Center just north of the MV Mississippi IV first detected the problem.

“The fear is heavy rain,” Breazeale said. The forecast called for a chance of showers Saturday night and sunny skies the rest of the week.

Since Friday morning, the Corps has been on 24-hour watch at the site, taking measurements each hour.

“Right now, there is no problem,” Breazeale said. “The issue is to keep the wall from falling and the water line from cracking. ”

To make sure neither happened, on Friday dump trucks hauled sand to the site, where bulldozers pushed the sand against the base of the slope beneath the slide. Above the slide, Washington Street suffered several cracks, which were sealed. Saturday, city workers checked for cracks and shifts in a storm drain just south of the shift.

“Right now, the situation is under control,” Mayor Paul Winfield said Saturday. “At this point, nothing has changed.”

The city’s water lines were being monitored for pressure losses, he said, with updates available at 601-801-3443, the city’s action line.

Asked late Saturday evening about Monday’s Corps meeting, Winfield said he was unaware that one had been set, but was sure the city would have a presence there and that the Corps had been keeping city officials up to date.

Anna Booth, the city’s Emergency Management director, urged people to stock up on water, but not panic.

“You should always have a plan,” she said Saturday. “The first 72 hours is on you.”

Paperwork to declare an emergency in the city has been drawn up if needed. Declaring an emergency frees officials to authorize large expenditures without a special called meeting, and makes it easier for state agencies to assist in response efforts.

In September 2006, a break on the same water line next to Anderson-Tully Company off North Washington Street left residents without water for 24 hours and cost the city about $60,000 to repair.

The water main is the primary line from the city’s water plant on Haining Road, which draws its water from several nearby wells. The main line along Washington Street splits into two 24-inch lines running in opposite directions near Jackson Street. From there, the system branches out into webs of 18-, 10- and 8-inch lines.

About 3 million gallons of water run through the system at any one time, distributing water to roughly 10,000 metered connections in the city. The city also sells some water to area water districts, but most draw the majority of their water from their own wells.

After a solution is set, Breazeale said, the Corps plans to move forward with construction on the interpretive center.

“Once that wall is supported correctly, the Corps is going to go back to plan A — that’s building the museum,” he said.

Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com