The city’s plans for an auxiliary main waterline is on hold, and city officials will have to re-examine the plans after the Board of Mayor and Aldermen rejected bids for the project because they were too far over its budget.

The board Monday rejected bids from four contractors, each of which was either double or more than double, the project’s $3.565 million budget.

The $8.57 million bid from T.L. Wallace Construction of Columbia was the highest of the four, with DirtWorks Inc. of Vicksburg’ coming in at $8.346 million. S.J. Louis Construction of Texas and Hemphill construction of Florence had the lowest bids of $7.626 million and $7.329 million, respectively.

Vivek Jain of project engineers IMS Engineers of Jackson declined to comment on the project, saying he was waiting to hear from city officials.

And city officials are unsure which way to go.

“We’re about $4 million out of the money. At this point, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman said. Van Norman, North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield and City Attorney Nancy Thomas have represented the city in meetings about the waterline with IMS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Vicksburg National Military Park officials. He added the board would have to meet soon to determine how it wants to proceed with the project.

“This is a very serious situation,” Mayfield said. “We need to get some kind of guidance as far as tweaking that project from the (city) engineer himself, and we can all get together and make a decision.”

“I’m really going to be seriously dependent on what Garnet tells us what we need to do as far as tweaking this entire project, because it’s going to have to be tweaked, no ifs ands or buts about it. You cannot stick the same project out there again and ask them to bid on the same project. You can’t do it.”

Van Norman said it is possible to make some changes in the design, such as the use of restraining joints and changing the type of pipe specified for the project.

“The whole line was called (in the design) to be locked together, all of it with restraining joints,” he said. “That wasn’t necessary. It just needs to be restrained in certain areas, and that would save some money.

Another change, he said, would be using bar-wrap pipe, which is supposed to be easier to work with and cheaper. “That would probably reduce the price some,” he said, adding he believes those changes would be approved by the Mississippi Department of Health.

“But all of that’s not going put it back in the money, and using a smaller line, I don’t know if the health department would approve that or not,” he said.

The biggest problem, Van Norman said, is the waterline’s route, which runs through the park. The route, he said, is supposed to be the shortest.

“We’re dealing with the railroad, the park and Fort Hill (drive),” he said.

According to the route mapped for the 30-inch waterline, it leaves the city’s water treatment plant on Haining Road and goes east to North Washington, where it crosses under the Kansas City Southern Railroad tracks to the east side of North Washington Street and then south along North Washington Street to a point south of Vicksburg National Cemetery, where it crosses the Military Park property to Fort Hill Drive. It then runs south on Fort Hill to Cherry Street to connect with an existing city line on Jackson Street.

“It’s a big project, and it’s a very serious project,” Mayfield said.

“I’m hoping within the next couple of weeks we would at least be able to start in a new direction with this project. You don’t get but one shot to get this project right. One shot.”

Work on the waterline began in 2010, after a landslide at the construction of the Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center threatened the city’s main waterline. The project is financed in part by a $2.45 million grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with the city paying the balance.

Planning for the project lapsed until February of 2014, when Mayor George Flaggs Jr. revived it.

The city lacks a permit with the National Park Service to cross the Vicksburg National Military Park after the initial permit expired in October. City officials will apply for a new permit when a contract for the work is awarded.