It’ll cost Vicksburg Bridge Commission $9,000 more in consulting fees to map out the next several years worth of inspections to the old U.S. 80 bridge across the Mississippi River.

A quote from Baton Rouge-based G.E.C., which has held a contract since 2009 to inspect and rate the bridge’s stability annually, to put a separate report together is worth that much and involves checkups ranging from routine pier work to the draconian measure, if ever needed, of taking the whole bridge down.

“We didn’t ask them to do this work, we just asked what it would cost to do this work,” chairman Robert Moss said. “This is the first time we’ve ever agreed to pay them the estimates on it.

Construction costs on four of five items on a punch-list commissioners created won’t be known until the study is complete later this year. Topics covered the same trouble spots noted in stability reports over the past decade. That includes long-term repair costs on pier 2, the first large support pier on the Mississippi side of the river, and future costs to repaint the bridge, address expansion joints and do any in-depth inspections.

“This is just gives us the stats so we can talk more intelligently about all this,” Moss said.

Taking the bridge down would cost $22 million, according to a response from the company shared by commissioners at their meeting Wednesday. The total was based on costs incurred while taking down the old river bridge at Greenville in 2011-12 after a new span was opened in 2010.

“That right there, that $22 million, is quite a difference from $5 million,” District 1 Commissioner Tom Hill said, referring to an earlier estimate before the response arrived.

VBC pays the firm $15,000 to do the annual stability reports, which have rated the 85-year-old, county-owned bridge in some category of fair-to-good in recent years. Deep-earth movement has been cited for piers moving over time; multiple reports issued by the firm in the past decade have noted pier 2 has moved 24 to 30 inches to the west since the bridge was built in 1930.

Talks to convert the roadbed of the bridge, which closed to vehicular traffic in 1998, to a pedestrian walkway and bike path were revived last fall. An informal group of park supporters and elected officials from Vicksburg and Warren County met Dec. 17 with Kansas City Southern Railway at the rail operator’s attorney’s offices in Jackson. Specifics were few and no further meeting has been announced. KCS pays tolls to the commission based on railcar counts that support the panel’s budget, which is dedicated nearly exclusively to maintenance.