Repairs to Washington Street south of the bridge at Clark Street will begin next week, city officials said.

Interim public works director Garnet Van Norman said Friday that project contractor American Field Service Corp. of Madison has received the notice to proceed with the project, adding “the contractor should start bringing in equipment Monday.”

American Field Service’s $203,536 bid was the lowest of three for the project to repair a section of Washington Street and stabilize a retaining wall near the street to keep it from moving.

According to the contract, American Field Service has 45 days to complete the repairs. Saradhi Balla of IMS Engineers, the engineers for the project, said Washington Street will not be closed during the repairs.

The project involves replacing 10 paved panels on the street and repairing the roadbed, and bracing a nearby retaining wall with about 30 anchors.

Kip Ray of Ewing & Ray Foundation Services of Ridgeland, the subcontractor that will install the anchors in the wall, said his employees will drill through the wall and install anchors into the slope behind the wall to hold it. A metal plate and bolt will secure the anchors to the wall.

“We’re going to keep it in place,” he said.

The Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Feb. 28 declared an emergency and restricted traffic on Washington Street south of the bridge after a city crew repairing a water main leak near the retaining wall saw it move as heavy trucks went by. City workers also discovered a gap between the wall and the slope.

When the emergency was declared, the board ordered that vehicles weighing more than 26,001 pounds, which included tractor-trailer rigs, log trucks, school buses and large emergency vehicles, be detoured.

The board on April 26 transferred $265,000 from the city’s recreation department budget to the street department to pay for the repairs.

The problem with the street was discovered shortly after the new bridge, which had been closed for three years for construction, was reopened to traffic. City officials have said the problem with the wall, which was built in 1929 when the bridge was built or the early 1930s, is not related to the bridge.

The Washington Street bridge was closed in 2009 while Kansas City Southern Railway and Kanza Construction Co. of Topeka, Kan., replaced the bridge with a concrete bridge atop a railroad tunnel.