This week the City of Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen took several bids for infrastructure improvements under advisement. The Mayor also met with Vicksburg Fire Department personnel on a five-year plan to improve the city’s fire and emergency services.

Fighting fire and providing emergency assistance is an important service the city provides to residents. The fire department is seeking to replace three aging firehouses. The first draft of the comprehensive five-year plan for the city’s fire department doesn’t include any funding options.

“I think it was a positive. (Mayor Flaggs) said that we’re going to protect what we do and that’s what we’re doing,” Atkins said. “We’re trying to make a good statement moving forward and getting the things we need to have to move forward.”

Something desperately needed to move forward is buried beneath the city. The city’s water supply lines are in desperate need of replacement. It wouldn’t do any good to build a dozen new firehouses if you can’t supply an adequate water supply to fire hydrants.

Thursday City of Vicksburg water department employees worked to repair a leaking 1-inch water service line near a section of the city’s water main that broke in 2014.

More and more The Vicksburg Post has reported on sinkholes caused by aging sewer and water lines that break far below the city’s streets.

The city’s water and sewer lines are more than 100-years-old and literally the arteries of the city. They are what keeps our city alive. Our community’s arteries are dangerously close to collapse and they need immediate attention.

It’s easy to overlook things beneath our feet, but without fresh water flowing from faucets, no visitor would want to visit out city. Without sewer service residents would flow out of Vicksburg as easily as water flowing from a broken line.

Sure we would like to have better fire services, but we need water. Our survival depends on it.