Central Asphalt Co. of Vicksburg has been hired by the city to repair sunken sections on the northern and southern ends of Warrenton Road.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday approved a $96,224 contract with Central Asphalt after declaring an emergency to fix the deteriorated sections. The emergency declaration allowed the board to hire the company without having to go through the bid process.

“Those two locations on Warrenton Road have gone down over the past couple of weeks,” Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman told the board. “There’s a lot of heavy trucks and traffic on the road from the gravel operation in the south, and we need to repair them before they get worse.”

The problem, he said, was with the road base at both sites. He said after the meeting the contractor will have to remove the paving to the base and rebuild it before repaving the sections.

Work on repairs began Tuesday, when the crews started working on the sunken part of Warrenton Road north of Riverwalk Casino. The other problem is at the approach to a bridge on the road’s southern end near Kemp Bottom Road.

Warrenton Road is closed to traffic north of Riverwalk Casino, although traffic will able to get on the road from U.S. 61 South.

Starting Monday, Warrenton Road will be closed south of Kemp Bottom Road, but traffic will be able to get to the casinos and Baxter Wilson Road from the Interstate 20 side.