Work on a wastewater treatment system for ISA TanTec’s proposed plant at Ceres industrial park is next up in the company’s push to open by Jan. 1, officials said.

A functioning system was key for the company to keep a self-imposed deadline to open at the former Calsonic auto supply warehouse, Warren County Port Commission executive director Wayne Mansfield said Monday as Florence-based Hemphill Construction was hired by the commission to start a rudimentary system. The Board of Supervisors had OK’d the move earlier in the day, pending the commission’s expected approval.

“To get their operations going by Jan. 1, we’ve got to put in the temporary system,” Mansfield said.  “Much of the temporary system will become part of the more permanent system, such as digging the ditch and laying the pipe to the manhole.”

A more permanent system will take six to eight months to build, with bids to be opened Tuesday, Mansfield said.

Hemphill landed the $215,000, sole-source contract after Clearwater Consultants, the board’s advisor on the treatment system for the Tyson Foods facility at Ceres, recommended it. The panel was allowed to OK a sole-source provider because it’s allowed as per the loan program from the state that’s financing the construction, Mansfield said. That pool of money, geared to industrial development, totals $2.65 million and is administered by the Mississippi Development Authority.

To be known as Mississippi TanTec Leather, Inc., represents a $10.1 million corporate investment and will create 366 new jobs at the 140,000 square-foot warehouse, company officials have said.

Funds from a $2 million capital improvement loan secured by the county earlier this year are financing the purchase of the building. Terms call for it to be repaid over 15 years.

ISA TanTec, which tans and packs raw leather at plants in China and Vietnam, sells leather to shoe makers including Timberland, Wolverine, Deckers, Clarks, Merrell, Sperry, Rockport and New Balance, among other apparel makers.

On the agenda

The Warren County Board of Supervisors:

• Authorized the board president to sign documents unfreezing the criminal account closed after the removal of former circuit clerk Shelly Ashley-Palmertree.

The move was ordered by the circuit court in order pay a $13,098 check in a felony bad check case from 2002. No restitution was paid until April, a month before the office was declared vacant by the Board of Supervisors and the clerk removed from office.

Held by BancorpSouth, the account had $32,640.99 in it at the time of the county’s action.

Supervisors have appealed part of the result a similar case involving a civil award of $36,000. The board has not been ordered to similarly unfreeze the civil holding account.

• Approved a $298,503.74 bid from Central Asphalt to replace an aging, timber-pile bridge on Wood Street. The project is to be financed using Local System Bridge Project funds from the state.

• Approved deleting 77 parcels of real property from the homestead exemption roll. All involved cases of spouses or other secondaries of deceased taxpayers no longer eligible for the exemption.

• Authorized a $25,000 quarterly allocation to the Warren County Parks and Recreation Commission for daily operations.

• Ratified the appointment of Jane Flowers as the county’s representative on the Mississippi Delta Strategic Initiative.

• Approved writing a letter of support for the City of Vicksburg’s application for the 2015 EPA Brownfields Assessment on the former Kuhn Memorial Hospital.

• Took under advisement a plan to draft an agreement transferring maintenance duties for a sign along Mississippi 465 and Eagle Lake Shore Road welcoming motorists to the Eagle Lake community.