Vicksburg and federal engineers both plan to spend the next week working separately on ideas of how to shore up soil around the main pipe providing water to city customers.

No blame has been placed, specifically, for shifting five days ago just off Washington Street and near where contractors were excavating a foundation for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Interpretive Center at City Front.

When movement of the 36-inch pipe was noted Friday, city and Corps officials directed a temporary fix by packing sand beneath the slide area with bulldozers. The pipe held and has not moved since. Work in the area has been stopped and traffic has been blocked to reduce vibrations.

Corps spokesman Kavanaugh Breazeale said federal personnel will be performing studies and Kenya Burks, chief of staff to Mayor Paul Winfield, said city officials, too, were developing plans.

“Right now, they’re looking at potential alternatives and pricing out possible solutions,” Burks said. “They haven’t presented them to the Board of Mayor and Alderman.”

Burks said city officials met with the Mississippi Development Authority representatives Tuesday to visit the Washington Street bridge at Clark Street, where a rail tunnel is to be constructed, also due to sloughing, and then included a viewing of the site of the land shift several miles north on the same street.

“We wanted to be proactive and let them see what had occurred also,” Burks said.

The city and county have declared a state of emergency to secure funding and aid in the event a break were to occur in the pipe, which would interrupt service to all city customers, including some of rural water districts.

The 36-inch line brings water into the city network from the municipal water purification plant, which is at the E.W. Haining Industrial Center near the city’s well field.

In 2006, a break in the line near the wells left residents without water for about a day and cost the city $60,000 in repairs.

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Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com